> And why are so many smart left
> academics allowed to publish such unintelligible bullshit?
There isn't a single "academic field" which churns out Theory like a bread-factory producing loaves; there are all these sub-fields, a complex division of labor between teaching texts, reading texts, theory texts, disciplines, fields, etc., each of which needs its own theory and activism. My own field, Comparative Literature, is sort of the Great Red Spot of academe -- its this zone of radical coherence, moving amidst a perpetual Jovian storm of inter/cross-disciplinary fusions. But any Comp Lit-critter would tell you that we couldn't do what we do without the national, regional, local and international specialists.
My own gripe is that the field of lit-crit is structurally reactionary -- the Dec MLA conference, I think, didn't have a single panel on videogame culture, and precious little on the mass media (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
-- DRR