The nature of reality is also a vexed question for the English department. Ultimately it is hidden forever by language games that conceal rather than reveal. Probing through the layers to actual meaning or truth is thought impossible. Much contemporary theory as a result doesn t take itself too seriously, but instead enjoys the play of language. In one notable example Giles Deleuze interrupts several paragraphs of freely flowing academic theory to point out that he had to be well tanked up before he could write stuff.
Narratives exist for their own sake and enjoyment of story.
Any claim to truth is automatically suspect. God is unknowable. By the definition of the pomo literary theorist, a person is not a unified being, but a collection of discourses that do not naturally fit together. We cannot communicate with others or ourselves, and exist in a perpetual state of mutation and fluidity. Nobody can really say what it means to be human, a fact reflected by a huge swathe of contemporary theory and story - the paranoid novel, the schizoid novel, the genre of cyberpunk would not be possible without this conception of humanity.