"One would expect, then, that such a political period would be rife with various veins of pseudo-mysticism, enamoured of whatever gives the slip to the concept, enthralled by those spasms of mind which confound its customary distinctions, which breed in us some ecstatic state of indeterminacy in which the border between identity and non-identity is transcended (though we could not of course know this), and the logical deadlock I have just described is dissolved rather than resolved."
— Eagleton, Terry (b. 1943)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
Oxford
Publisher
Blackwell
Date
1996
Metaphor
"One would expect, then, that such a political period would be rife with various veins of pseudo-mysticism, enamoured of whatever gives the slip to the concept, enthralled by those spasms of mind which confound its customary distinctions, which breed in us some ecstatic state of indeterminacy in which the border between identity and non-identity is transcended (though we could not of course know this), and the logical deadlock I have just described is dissolved rather than resolved."
Metaphor in Context
One would expect, then, that such a political period would be rife with various veins of pseudo-mysticism, enamoured of whatever gives the slip to the concept, enthralled by those spasms of mind which confound its customary distinctions, which breed in us some ecstatic state of indeterminacy in which the border between identity and non-identity is transcended (though we could not of course know this), and the logical deadlock I have just described is dissolved rather than resolved. Such 'thought' would at once be preciously utopian, running its head against the limits of language in order to glimpse some currently inconceivable state beyond it, and a fantastic displacement of a genuine political deadlock. [...]
(p. 6)
(p. 6)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
Date of Entry
11/16/2015
