MODERNISM/POSTMODERNISM
Ihab Hassan
| Romanticism / Symbolism | 'Pataphysics / Dadaism |
| Form (conjunctive, closed) | Antiform (disjunctive, open) |
| Purpose | Play |
| Design | Chance |
| Hierarchy | Anarchy |
| Mastery / Logos | Exhaustion / Silence |
| Art Object / Finished Work | Process / Performance / Happening |
| Distance | Participation |
| Creation / Totalization / Synthesis | Decreation / Deconstruction / Antithesis |
| Presence | Absence |
| Centering | Dispersal |
| Genre / Boundary | Text / Intertext |
| Semantics | Rhetoric |
| Paradigm | Syntagm |
| Hypotaxis | Parataxis |
| Metaphor | Metonymy |
| Selection | Combination |
| Root / Depth | Rhizome / Surface |
| Interpretation / Reading | Against Interpretation / Misreading |
| Signified | Signifier |
| Lisible | Scriptible |
| Narrative / Grand Histoire | Anti-narrative / Petite Histoire |
| Master Code | Idiolect |
| Type | Mutant |
| Genital / Phallic | Polymorphous / Androgynous |
| Paranoia | Schizophrenia |
| God the Father | The Holy Ghost |
| Metaphysics | Irony |
| Determinacy | Indeterminacy |
| Transcendence | Immanence |