Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Snark of the Day: 2008-04-16

When one analyzes [post-modernist and deconstruction] writings, one often finds radical-sounding assertions whose meaning is ambiguous and that can be given two alternative readings: one as interesting, radical, and grossly false; the other as boring and trivially true.
-- Alan Sokal, via Massimo Pigliucci

4 comments:

Rick said...

Snarky, maybe, but generally true. Deconstruction has been deconstructed...

bjkeefe said...

That's my sense, too, but I don't really know enough about it to have a meaningful opinion. What little I do know suggests that the original thinking had some merit, but that it has since been taken too far.

Rick said...

I'm far from an expert on the subject myself, but so long as it stayed in the realm of lit-crit deconstruction yielded interesting results (my recent post about 24 was a ham-handed attempt at deconstruction--forget about what's said and shown, what's left unspoken and off-screen is the interesting stuff, etc.).
Unfortunately, like most post-modern ideas, some idiots thought it could form the basis for ethical/political thinking...

bjkeefe said...

Yeah. Kind of like those people who try to use quantum theory to explain free will.

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