> <URL: http://www.sdonline.org/34/manjur_karim.htm >
> For a pomo text, quite well written, even funny in spots.
Yes, it's somewhat better written than the general run of this stuff, but here we go again:
"Opposing the allegation that Marxism postulated a universal subject, Martin *valorizes* labor as a mediated, reflexive, self-creative activity."
Lordy, how I hate that word! Can anyone explain to me why Karim had to use the word "valorizes," when "describes" works just as well? It seems to me that "valorize" is merely a fashionable word that a lot of academics use just to show that they are "in," like the baggy pants worn with the top of the butt crack showing that the kids sport these days.
Also:
"There is an affinity between postmodernism, as a mode of reflection/agency which fragments yet simultaneously holds the potential of transcending that fragmentation..."
Fragments *what,* for Christ's sake? These folks are such lazy writers that they constantly leave out the objects of their transitive verbs, making the reader wonder what the Sam Hill they are talking about. If we knew what he was fragmenting, we might actually have some idea of whether it was possible to "transcend" that fragmentation or not. And these guys use "transcend," as well as "transgress," in so many different ways that the words become nearly meaningless. Does he mean "put back together what was fragmented"? If so, what would it look like after it was put back together? Any different from what it looked like before it was fragmented? Who knows? We're just floating around in some sort of linguistic swamp here.
"... postmodernism owes a greater intellectual debt to Marxist theory than is often recognized."
??? I thought "scholars" in this field had been pointing out that debt all the time. I am frankly practically ignorant of every aspect of postmodernism (because I can't understand what the heck they are saying most of the time), but that was one of the first things I learned about it.
"The possibility of socialism emerges at every point where what had been produced principally for exchange under the various economies of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality each assumes a value that can reclaim the primacy of itself in use. Socialism does not exhaust the identity or the conditions of necessity for any political movement, nor does it reduce their strategy and tactics to a singular form, but provides a means of calibrating each of these mobilizations with their context. Here context is not a stable entity but a frame of reference with which to imagine social relations." (quote from Martin)
Here Martin seems to be saying something that might actually be worth pondering, especially in the first sentence. But why do I have to beat my brains out trying to figure out what he is saying, because of his over-use of undefined, abstract nouns and vague, metaphorical verbs: "economies of race, gender, sexuality, and nationalities," "reclaim the primacy of itself in use," "identity or the conditions of necessity," "calibrating each of these mobilizations with their context," "frame of reference"? This is the sort of writing that cries out for a good editor. It is just sheer arrogance to publish crap like this and expect the reader to do all the work, when any polite writer with a half-way adequate understanding of the duties of a writer claiming to present a message to the public would have rewritten and polished his prose so that the reader's job would be as easy as possible. I get so fed up with this kind of arrogance that I refuse to read it! If that makes me ignorant of the latest, vital trends in leftist thought, so be it! Into the fireplace with the stuff!
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax