This stuff is so depressing to read, because it just says the same old shit over and over. And the stupidity is always the same kind of stupidity. So "philosophy, is always implicated in power", is it? Well, well, who would have thought. That's a pretty shrewd criticism. It also means that when pomos get research grants for writing this stuff and take expensive trips around the world to meet other people who also write this stuff, all of that lucre which has been redirected from the fiscus into the science system is now being used to undermine the whole system of power, is it? Hey, pretty rad, dewd!
They just never realise that these totalising statements rebound on their own discourse ("always implicated", "always engaged"). At best this is hypocrisy; at its most contemptible it is just self-deception. No the postmodern is not new -- got that right; it's a stuck record. It just becomes more and more of a paragon of what it purports to be criticising. "Domesticate and refuse"? Well refuse yes. But how can one domesticate that which is already so domesticated, so smug and and apparently so secure in the academic establishment? Do any of you actually know the kind of people who peddle this stuff? How smug, suburban and utterly worthless they are politically?
I obviously didn't realise in my previous post that the stuff I was attacking was Butler's own; but since shag reproduced it uncritically I don't feel that any apologies are in order.
Tahir
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