Or, What the hell is wrong with being intelligent AND well-spoken?Read this carefully:
Quote from: Roland BarthesA text is not a line of words releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.
Now,
I know what Mr. Barthes is getting at...sort of...after several hours of learning about linguistics, semiotics, structuralism, and post-structuralism (deconstruction). So I know that he has made a point--the question is, is there any point to the point?
Postmodernism and deconstruction are said to be "tools" by which people analyze the world and the products of it. Many things are kept in mind, such as the influence of perception on meaning, the plasticity of perception, cultural relativism, the media by which messages are conveyed, etc etc etc. It's the bastard child of psychology and sociology, with a little semiotics thrown in.
When reading about these sort of things, they seem interesting enough.
But try actually
reading a postmodernist "scholarly" text.
I dare you.
All of these interesting little bits and pieces don't actually add up to anything. They have little to do with actual postmodern practices. You want to know why? Huh?
To put it simply, postmodern intelligentsia is infected with
jargon.
Now,
jargon is perhaps a cause, and perhaps a symptom. Either way, nobody says anything worth reading. Art, literature, philosophy, and all the parasitical* practices that surround them, have descended into pure gibberish. Is it a defensive measure? Has It All Been Done? Is it a bizarre and sadistic form of competition to see who can be the most incestuously baroque? I don't know. All I know is people can get away with things like this:
Quote from: Arundhati RoyAs Khubchand lay dying on his cushion, Estha could see the bedroom window reflected in his smooth, purple balls. And the sky beyond. And once a bird that flew across. To Estha—steeped in the smell of old roses, blooded on memories of a broken man—the fact that something so fragile, so unbearably tender had survived, had been allowed to exist, was a miracle. A bird in flight reflected in an old dog’s balls. It made him smile out loud.
QuoteThe sculpted hollows on either side of his taut, beautiful buns. Tight plums. Men’s bums never grow up.**
Shiny purple dog balls. And this is one of the seminal texts of postmodern literature. I know for a fact that she edited
three pages of the entire thing. Three pages. A pile of stream-of-consciousness purple-dog-ball-tight-plum-bum SHIT.
NO WONDER PEOPLE WANT TO BE STUPID.When it takes a hundred times as much explaining to understand something as it takes to look at it, it's time to go home and take a fucking nap and a common-sense suppository.
*Meaning dependent on, not but not inimical to
**Arundhati Roy,
The God of Small Things
i think i lost ya there...
rawr!
1.
The God of Small Things was crap. But apparently, you knew that.
2.
Quote from: Roland Barthes
A text is not a line of words releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. Including what you are reading right now.
Fixed that for him. Most commentary on post-modernism/deconstructionalists seem to exclude their own writings from the process.
Then again, I may be missing the whole point. I never said I was smart.
I dig your dislike of postmodernism. Nice rant too.