"In this brilliant new critique, Terry Eagleton explores the beginnings, ambivalences, histories, subjects, fallacies and contradictions of postmodernism. Concerned less with recherche formulations of postmodern philosophy than with the culture or milieu, or even the sensibility, of postmodernism as a whole, he has in his sights, above all, a particular kind of student, or consumer, of 鈥檖opular鈥?brands of postmodern thought." "Although Professor Eagleton鈥檚 view of the topic is, as he says, generally a negative one, he draws attention equally to postmodernism鈥檚 strengths as well as its failings. He sets out not just to expose the illusory, but, by subtly grounded argument, to show the students he has in mind that they never believed what they thought they believed in the first place. In the process his devastating gifts for irony and satire sharpen the reader鈥檚 pleasure, just as his commitment to the ethical and the vision of a just society inspire engagement and 鈥檃 refusal to acquiesce in the appalling mess which is the contemporary world鈥?"--BOOK JACKET.