Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Systems Theory and the Politics of Postmodernity -- I . SYSTEMS THEORY AND/OR POSTMODERNISM? HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND ETHICAL FRAMES -- 1. Why Does Society Describe Itself as Postmodern? -- 2. No Exit? (Response to Luhmann) -- 3. Pre- and Post-Dialectical Materialisms: Modeling Praxis without Subjects and Objects -- 4. Immanent Systems, Transcendental Temptations, and the Limits of Ethics -- 5. Rethinking the Beyond within the Real (Response to Rasch) -- I I . OF REALISM AND RECURSIVITY: SYSTEMS THEORY AND THE POSTMODERN EPISTEME -- 6. Theory of a Different Order: A Conversation with Katherine Hayles and Niklas Luhmann -- 7. Making the Cut: The Interplay of Narrative and System, or What Systems Theory Can't See -- 8. In Search of Posthumanist Theory: The Second-Order Cybernetics of Maturana and Varela -- III. SYSTEMS THEORY IN RESONANCE WITH MAJOR POSTMODERNISTS -- 9. The Limit of Modernity: Luhmann and Lyotard on Exclusion -- 10. Blinded Me with Science: Motifs of Observation and Temporality in Lacan and Luhmann -- 11. Making Contingency Safe for Liberalism: The Pragmatics of Epistemology in Rorty and Luhmann -- 12. The Autonomy of Affect -- Contributors -- Permissions -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.