> If you've never actually tried to translate complex material, I don't
> think you know what you are talking about. I have been praised
> numerous times for being non-technical, a decent and entertaining
> writer, and people archive my posts at delicious and elsewhere because
> I apparently help them understand Foucault, Derrida, etc.
>
There's a difference between complexity and obfuscation. We are not
complaining about complexity; we are complaining about obfuscation, and
I am offering a historical reason for its existence: it was a means for
people to "distinguish" themselves in a tight labor market and also to
declare their actual political allegiances.
One of my dissertation topics was the history of literary criticism (poetics) starting with Plato and ending with, I think, Lukacs. And, no, the classical critical writers do not obfuscate. The willful obfuscation IS new. Before, they had Latin so they didn't need to torture the vernacular.
I am very glad that you had the smarts and the time to disentangle Zizek and Derrida, etc., but I think it is blinding you to some of the issues we are raising.
Joanna