Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Obfuscatio  So I ran across this sentence on a list I subscribe to:
In general, feminist theorists seek renewed social status
for non-analytical ways of knowing which, it is has been
argued, most eurowestern projects of modernity reject.

Is it just me, or is this a Macbethian sentence (full of sound and fury, signifying nothing)? At least it is, to my thinking, a further example of what's wrong with academ.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's straight out of the media theory / cultural studies / postmodern criticism / feminist studies material I used to read lots of when I was prepping for grad school.

Setting aside the cement-mixer prose, it's jsut pointing out that there are other ways of seeing things and dicscussing them that should be considered valid.

This is a lot quicker to say, but it isn't nearly as weighty sounding, and is less likely to sustain the academic industry by creating discursive boundaries...

Joe said...

I agree that perhaps there may be other ways of looking at an issue. I simply take exception to the postmodern speak that she wrote. There are clearer ways to say it without resorting to academic babble: "Eurowestern" indeed!