#3: ode to po-mo(s)
Yesterday I was reading a journal article, and it turned painful. The culprit: Po-Mo(s). Each paragraph, if not each sentence, had an "-ism" thrown in – as if they were vulnerable without that crutch for intellectual legitimacy and support.
I was never a student of philosophy or political science. Are post-modernist (a po-mo in itself) labels truly so integral to those fields of study, or is it just a habit? They don't add much value. But they definitely distract and confuse the uninitiated. Maybe it's just a quirk – just as some indulge in "name-dropping".
It reminds me of a friend. She is delightful company. But as soon as she gets talking remotely academic, the -isms come bubbling forth. I say to myself, "Sistah, You've lost me". She's not from UMD, else a session with one "Doctor" Robert Hunt Sprinkle would have cured her!!!
Did you ever have to read legal briefs? It's an exclusive club; only lawyers can read, write, and comprehend (decode) their own language. Just count the number of "hitherto notwhithstanding"(s) in a page. Who says these things? It's all a licensing strategy to limit competition. God forbid if lesser mortals could interpret legal arguments.
I was never a student of philosophy or political science. Are post-modernist (a po-mo in itself) labels truly so integral to those fields of study, or is it just a habit? They don't add much value. But they definitely distract and confuse the uninitiated. Maybe it's just a quirk – just as some indulge in "name-dropping".
It reminds me of a friend. She is delightful company. But as soon as she gets talking remotely academic, the -isms come bubbling forth. I say to myself, "Sistah, You've lost me". She's not from UMD, else a session with one "Doctor" Robert Hunt Sprinkle would have cured her!!!
Did you ever have to read legal briefs? It's an exclusive club; only lawyers can read, write, and comprehend (decode) their own language. Just count the number of "hitherto notwhithstanding"(s) in a page. Who says these things? It's all a licensing strategy to limit competition. God forbid if lesser mortals could interpret legal arguments.
Labels: université
1 Comments:
Every academic or otherwise formal discipline has its special language. This goes for pomo thought as well, perhaps more so. Of course, this special language can function either heuristically, as a theoretical shortcut, or as a black box, a kind of blindspot that needs explanation. It's easy for non-pomos to say it's all "po-mo." But, again, this is often poor intellectualism on their part - using basically an ad hominem to dismiss thought they don't understand.
There may be good reasons to take a particular position or argument to be bogus. But rejecting it by labeling even a bad argument as being part of such and such a school is as fallacious as the kind of thinking non-pomos suspect pomos engage in.
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