142 Quotes About Postmodernism

The values we rightly associate with the modern age - the "liberty, equality, and fraternity" of the French revolution - are all endangered today not by the dead hand of tradition but by modernity itself, and they can be salvaged only by moving beyond it.

An attempt to wrest from God the prerogatives of absolute freedom and infinity leads to the inversion of Pentecost and what is in effect a new Babel. 'Postmodernism' represents that Babel perfectly, because when each speaks a language unrelated to that of the other - when language is not the basis of the communication that shapes our being - the only outcome can be fragmentation. In that sense, postmodernism is modernity come home to roost.

The question of the relation between modernity and postmodernity revolves around the issue of 'legitimation.' Modernity, then, appeals to science to legitimate its claim - and by 'science' we simply mean the notion of a universal, autonomous reason. Science, then, is opposed to narrative, which attempts not to prove its claims but rather to proclaim them within a story.

Jed then realized that he was standing in a book, and wondered if this book told the story of his life.

Is there a word for forgetting the name of someone when you want to introduce them to someone else at the same time you realize you've forgotten the name of the person you're introducing them to as well?""No.

Change. Change. Change. Change … change. Change. Chaaange. When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do.

This is a bright place, filled with frightened people, and fast hard things that hurt and wound. No matter. I swore I would remain by her side forever, and until death divided us.

Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.

And why not—whatever despair we may feel concerning resurrection and reassemblage—find comic relief in the human determination to assert wholeness in the face of inevitable decay and fragmentation?