After theory

The next big statement from one of our foremost radical intellectuals, announcing the end of the postmodern era-and the start of the next big way to think about the world we face today. from the first chapter:"Those who can, think up feminism or structuralism; those who can't, apply such insights to Moby-Dick or The Cat in the Hat.

But the new generation came up with no comparable ideas of its own.

The older generation had proved a hard act to follow.

No doubt the new century will in time give birth to its own clutch of gurus.

For the moment, however, we are still trading on the past-and this in a world which has changed dramatically since Foucault and Lacan first settled to their typewriters.

What kind of fresh thinking does the new era demand?"For anyone forced to wrestle with the likes of Derrida, Barthes, and Kristeva during their college days, Terry Eagleton needs no introduction.

His clear and accessible primer on literary theory was (and is) an indispensable guide to the postmodern era in the humanities.

Now he argues that the age of cultural theory has come to a close-and looks at what should follow.

Tracing the rise and fall of postmodern ideas from the 1960s through the