This is a Test; It is Only a Test

I've been reading this book, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith, and I've sort of fallen in love with it. It's written for the layman, whatever that means, and for the practitioner, so it's written in language that anyone can understand if they feel like making the effort. There is one work he uses over and over again with which I am unfamiliar...

I'm lost for a moment in looking for the word, and of course, because I am looking for it, it is hopeless that I should actually find it, though I know it occurs the or four times per chapter. Which brings me to the subject of this experiment. I was looking for a quotation I read yesterday. It was a brief statement, seeming to me to sum up my heart-felt belief, and also my dilemma, concerning criticism (or should I say, argumentation?).

If we are going to do justice to postmodernism, our engagement with it needs to be characterized by charity--and charity requires time.

James K.A. Smith says this on page 36, just before he begins to examine Derrida's statement that there is "nothing outside the text" in careful detail, which I have understood from other sources is the only way one should ever read Derrida, that is "carefully and in detail."

On a side note, what the heck are inverted commas? (You'll notice I've just linked to a blog that references inverted commas, but the post isn't about inverted commas. I haven't even read the entire post yet, but I made a snap judgment the other day that I like this girl, so I bookmarked her site, and low and behold, this afternoon something she said springs to mind. Don't you find my randomness irresistible? Now, by the way, I am listening to The Civil Wars.) And how does one acquire them--I mean inverted commas?

Getting to the point, I wanted to find this quote, but in flipping through the pages I just couldn't find it, so I went on Google and did a word search. There's no particular reason why I tend to use Google, only that it is the first search engine that ever springs to mind, and there it is right in my web browser. I am in the habit of using Google products--such as Google Books, which is where I found the quote I was looking for, as well as a large portion of this text.

I was thrilled to find exactly the quotation I was looking for, pleased as well that I could see which page the quotation was on and turn to that very page in the library's copy of the book, and then I saw that I could either copy a link and link the the page, or embed something in my text elsewhere. That's when I got the idea that has unaccountably gotten me writing this afternoon.

What would it mean to embed this link into the text of a blog post? It doesn't help that I don't actually know how to use html, and so cannot work on the same page where the embedding is done. This is an experiment.



What will show up when I press the preview button? Better yet, what will show up when I eventually post it to my blog, as I have now decided to do? Would it actually make better sense for me to just put it in as a link considering that would simplify matters so very much? I won't get to find out until you do.

You have been party to an experiment. Thank you for your patience in following the twists and turns of my curious logic. The word I was looking for earlier was "kerygmatic," kerygama being the Greek word used for preaching of the Gospel used in the New Testament, or so one of the more convenient online dictionaries tell me.