This is a graphic novel that purports to introduce the reader to the concept and world of postmodernism, a fraught and not static idea that may or may not be dead, may or may not have ever existed, and may or may not be the driving force of every language, art, and design element of our lives.
And to add to the fluidity of all this, this is the audiobook version of the graphic novel, so there’s a lot of weird little voice acting moments throughout. I think I have read the graphic novel version at some point.
Postmodernism for a lot of people is contained within the Simpsons in a meaningfully simplistic moment, when Moe changes up his bar, calls it po-mo, and tells everyone “Weird for the sake of weird”.
Obviously this is not the most useful understanding of it. I think of it more in terms with art and design attempting to come to terms with the limits and failures of language to represent the world. If realism, and a much lesser extent modernism, are grappling with the ways in which one can narrate reality, I think postmodernism more or less has decided it can’t, so instead of trying to do that, it tries to capture the fractured nature of that reality, and extends that project beyond the human mind’s perception of reality (or more so, brings in the different signals and images of the world into the process of trying to represent the world). I also think postmodernism has a better sense that all art and design is a forever addition palimpsest as well.
So! How does that translate to this book? I think it’s a tool, not an end. I don’t think you can get a whole lot from this book unless you’ve read or tried to read a lot of the reference points (Foucault, Lacan, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Heidegger, etc) and in a lot of ways, you’re better off reading the wikipedia pages.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Postmodernism-Graphic-Guide-ebook/dp/B00KFEJP52/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=introducing+postmodernism&qid=1573652447&sr=8-1)