‘Since at least Plato …’ and Other Postmodernist Myths

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 1-11

3. Postmodernism and the Innocuous Logic of ‘Both/And’

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. The Rhetoric of the Logic of Both/And

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 15-45

   3. Paradox, Undecidability, and the Novel

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 46-63

   4. Postmodernism, Logic, and Politics

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 64-79

   5. Apparent Contradictions, True Contradictions, and Meaning

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 80-95

4. ‘Modernity,’ ‘Postmodernity,’ and All That: The ‘Grand Narratives’ of Postmodernism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-97

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   2. Metaphysically Underdetermined Beliefs

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 99-114

   3. Myths about Literary Realism

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 115-152

   4. Literature, Science, and Postmodernist Theory

      • M. J. Devaney

      Pages 153-204

5. Back Matter

   Pages 205-245

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'Since at Least Plato...' and Other Postmodernist Myths surveys the fields of theories of postmodernism and criticizes some of the most common claims found in them about philosophy, science, and the relationship and literary techniques to metaphysics, epistemology, and political ideologies. Devaney finds the accounts offered by these theories of concepts ranging from the law of noncontradiction to relativity and the Uncertainty Principle to be as ill-informed as they are pervasive. Devaney shows how the use to which these accounts have been put in constructing the story of the progression from realism to postmodernism to modernism flattens out both the history of ideas and the history of literature.

• ideology
• law
• logic
• Narrative
• novel
• Plato
• postmodernism
• realism
• rhetoric

M.J.DEVANEY

Policies and ethics