So who is cruel? You, cruel reader, you are.

Postmodernism has turned into this devil's vortex where no matter what you do, your neck will be turned and your face shoved into a foreign example, and worse, no matter what you say, despite the context, it will be considered a postmodern device. That's the danger of postmodernism: it poses itself as something that can't be trumped, something you can’t escape. It continually mocks your efforts for the sake of its name. I know even this will be seen as another postmodern bullet, and no matter what I say, critics and readers will be locked into how to lock me in.

However, as Bordo herself notes, the problem with the adoption of postmodern ideas in general is that they have led some writers to disregard the materiality of power relations.

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end?

If Barthes, along with Bachelard, is one of those who have done most to enrich criticism during the last thirty years, it is not as a theoretician of a still hazy semiology, but as the champion of a new pleasure in reading.

Tenemos una sociedad de subnormales, y por eso la gente actúa como lo hace, y se hace lo que se hace.