ABSTRACT
A postmodern essay cannot avoid its own exemplarity with respect to the modernity it seeks to situate as an after effect or an abject of its own success. Its exemplarity consists in its wounded subjectivity, its deterritorialization due to its recognition that it lacks any ground outside of its own construction. Nevertheless, the postmodern essay remains a satellite of modernity which in turn remains a star recognized by its distance from the medieval world and the ancient cosmos. In this sense the essayist is a travelling theorist who like Montaigne discovers that all the while he has moved around himself looking for a niche in which to resettle his home.
