While there is a lot of Truth to what you say about postmodernist text, I think you have missed the mark here in many ways....I will write some more later if I remember, on mobile at the moment.
What happens when your social movement becomes run by college grads, for college grads. Keeping the riff-raff out is a feature; they can be instructed by their betters at the next DEI seminar.
I don’t disagree that a ton of philosophy is inaccessible, but “postmodern” (essentially a meaningless term) thinkers are not the primary or only culprits. One cannot read rigorous philosophy without understanding a lot of the history, terms, etc. that are used in very niche ways. Is a lot of it overly verbose? Yes. Did this start with postmodernism? No way. Read Kant and tell me that he was trying to make it simple. Yet, he is one of the most important thinkers of modernity. Some of it is lame and would be much more helpful to the general populous if it was said plainly. But there’s also a lot that requires very specific, nuanced, and crazy-making terms that only make sense in context of other ideas and are probably irrelevant to most people who don’t really care about getting into the weeds on very complicated topics.
Engaging in post-modernist theorizing has always struck me as rather akin to stringing up fairy lights in a dorm room already well-flooded by fluorescent tubes...which is to say, pretty, I guess, in an artificial and contrived sort of way.
I picked up a Frantz Fanon book that was laying around a common area in my freshman year of college, and I lost all respect for such theorizers in a few short pages. They have such an aversion to actually saying a single concrete thing that it gets painful. It comes off as more acutely insecure than any awkward nerdy guy I've ever been friends with, and there have been a lot. The cowardly logic seems to be, "if I don't actually say anything, no one can call me wrong." It's an aversion to actual debate and a preference for the "yes, and" rules of stage improv, but with leaden moralizing instead of humor.
While there is a lot of Truth to what you say about postmodernist text, I think you have missed the mark here in many ways....I will write some more later if I remember, on mobile at the moment.
What happens when your social movement becomes run by college grads, for college grads. Keeping the riff-raff out is a feature; they can be instructed by their betters at the next DEI seminar.
I don’t disagree that a ton of philosophy is inaccessible, but “postmodern” (essentially a meaningless term) thinkers are not the primary or only culprits. One cannot read rigorous philosophy without understanding a lot of the history, terms, etc. that are used in very niche ways. Is a lot of it overly verbose? Yes. Did this start with postmodernism? No way. Read Kant and tell me that he was trying to make it simple. Yet, he is one of the most important thinkers of modernity. Some of it is lame and would be much more helpful to the general populous if it was said plainly. But there’s also a lot that requires very specific, nuanced, and crazy-making terms that only make sense in context of other ideas and are probably irrelevant to most people who don’t really care about getting into the weeds on very complicated topics.
Engaging in post-modernist theorizing has always struck me as rather akin to stringing up fairy lights in a dorm room already well-flooded by fluorescent tubes...which is to say, pretty, I guess, in an artificial and contrived sort of way.
I picked up a Frantz Fanon book that was laying around a common area in my freshman year of college, and I lost all respect for such theorizers in a few short pages. They have such an aversion to actually saying a single concrete thing that it gets painful. It comes off as more acutely insecure than any awkward nerdy guy I've ever been friends with, and there have been a lot. The cowardly logic seems to be, "if I don't actually say anything, no one can call me wrong." It's an aversion to actual debate and a preference for the "yes, and" rules of stage improv, but with leaden moralizing instead of humor.