Quotations from Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Clip 1

[gspaulsson]

Postmodernism has its place in literary theory, since literary texts can bear multiple and contradictory meanings, which are testimony to the richness of the text. But in empirical disciplines (I am an historian) putting the cart of advocacy before the horse of evidence is likt the days of summer: lazy, hazy and crazy. Besides, it is all much too old now even to be chic any more.

[gspaulsson]

I believe that I captured the basic tenet of postmodernism in 1968, in a review of Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology, in which I wrote that "you can no more think without ideology than you can speak without language". I've grown up since then and come to understand the difference between an ideology (a system used to construe reality) and an empirical theory (a system derived from and consistent with reality). It is the difference between history and propaganda.

[gspaulsson]

When Foucault says that "It is meaningless to speak in the name of, or against, reason, truth or knowledge", is he not making a statement that he would like us to treat as reasonable and true, and is he not claiming to add to the sum of knowledge? If not, then why is he saying it? Fish's statement sounds like a paraphrase of Berdyayev's: "What is it to me that twice two is four if twice two is five pleases me is better?"