392 Quotes About Theory

I came to theory because I was hurting—the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend—to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing.

Die Kunst des Rezensierens besteht nicht zuletzt darin, selbst über langweilige Bücher fesselnd zu schreiben.

While scholars can, of course, be activists and activists can be scholars, combining these two roles is liable to create problems and, when a political stance is taught at university, it is apt to become an orthodoxy, which cannot be questioned.

Theories are like mathematical formulas. As the formulas help us to solve the sums, similarly, the theories help us to establish our point[s] in research!

Foucault adopted the position that there are no fundamental principles by which to discover truth and that all knowledge is "local" to the knower - ideas which form the basis of the postmodern knowledge principle. Foucault didn't deny that a reality exists, but he doubted the ability of humans to transcend our cultural biases enough to get at it.

The Postmodern Political Principle: A belief that society is formed of systems of power and hierarchies, which decide what can be known and how

Because of their focus on power dynamics, these thinkers argued that the powerful have, both intentionally and inadvertently, organized society to benefit them and perpetuate their power. They have done so by legitimating certain ways of talking about things as true, which then spread throughout society, creating societal rules that are viewed as common sense and perpetuated on all levels.

Because of its rejection of objective truth and reason, postmodernism refuses to substantiate itself and cannot, therefore, be argued with.

Almost every socially significant category has been intentionally complicated and problematized by postmodern Theorists in order to deny such categories any objective validity and disrupt the systems of power that might exist across them.