This critique explores the origins and emergence of postmodernism, revealing its ambivalences and contradictions. Its primary concern is less with the more intricate formulations of postmodern philosophy than with the culture or milieu of postmodernism as a whole. Above all, it speaks to a particular kind of student or consumer, of popular "brands" of postmodern thought. Although Terry Eagleton's view of the topic is, as he says, generally a negative one, he points to postmodernism's strengths as well as its failings. He sets out not just to expose the illusions of postmodernism, but to show the students he has in mind that they never believed what they thought they believed in the first place.