Jerry Monaco wrote:
> Finally I come to the following conclusion: These people have little
> to say I can understand but what I can understand is banal and what I
> can't understand seems to be nothing but the obscurantism of an
> intellectual culture that needs to reinvent a secular version of the
> charisma of religious mumbo jumbo.
Chomsky came to the same conclusion in an interview I read. What I understand from reading all of them isn't always banal -- Zizek can be insightful and funny, but what really, really, really puts me off is the obscurantism of the writing style. This style can be perfectly explained by the fact that academia has been a buyer's market for more than thirty years and those who aspired to a secure place had to distinguish themselves in some manner. The angst-filled Ciceronian style was the chosen solution.
What the style says to me is this: "Nothing is more important than distinguishing myself amongs other aspiring academics: not the content of my discourse, not the audiences expectation of clarity, not their desire to understand, ....nothing is important except identifying myself as a member of the club." (This tack by the way is entirely consistent with what I observe in corporate culture, which has nothing but profound contempt for content.)
Now, there would be a way out for these people: it's called scholarship, and there is still a need for it. But scholarship requires content and it requires a lot of dim, dull, hard work that sometimes leads to nothing, and it is an anonymous collective kind of work. So, instead, this endless wankery, which, ironically enough, will lead them all into oblivion a generation or two from now. No "Life of Boswell" or "On the Eloquent Vernacular" or "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is coming out of these folks.
Joanna
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