In his study of the mechanics of scientific revolutions, Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that scientific researchers operate at any given time within a widely accepted paradigm, which determines the prevailing theories until the moment when a consensual crisis causes the old paradigm to be discarded in favour of a new one. In the humanities, paradigm shifts do not take place with such revolutionary abruptness, with such definitive breaks as in the sciences. Here the prevalent paradigms are more difficult to identify; one finds a codominance of older, renewed and new schools of thought that operate alongside, together with, or against one another.

Despite this, one particular paradigm has nevertheless attained clear pre-eminence in discussions of cultural theory during the past decades: that of the postmodern. Arising out of sporadic attacks during the 1960s against the conventions of modern literature and art, the postmodern debate has expanded into a general cultural critique and has affected practically all areas of the humanities.