Dear all,
Many thanks to those who replied to my flippant attack on postmodernist
writing. What follows is an inadequate summary of those replies and a few
thoughts.
A number of correspondents wrote to thank me for the references and to agree
they found such postmodernist writing very difficult to penetrate, at best.
It is always nice to know you are not alone, but there is little else to say
except to thank them for demonstrating that I am not the only one struggling
to make sense of such writing.
A couple of correspondents have clearly greater expertise in this area than
I. I stand quite rightly chastened for 'intolerant lampooning' (Gareth
Williams) and have no defence other than frustration with what I perceive as
deliberately obscure writing. The contention (correct) that many sentences
in biological science journals 'are equally meaningless without
interpretation' (GW) is not, I think a defence of postmodernism, but rather
an indictment of others. I would argue that good editing in medical
literature is largely about clarity and increasingly evident in medical
journals, at least. Much postmodernist material is incomparably more
tortuous grammatically. What makes medical writing obscure is more often
jargon rather than structure. I appreciate the warning that I may be losing
my intellectual openess, however, and willtry harder in future.
David Rea, in a generally supportive reply, makes the point that 'what
defines truth in the "post-modern condition" is the ability of governments
and big business to fund the science they want funded and want to see
succeed.' David goes on to say that it is almost impossible to get funding
from the government for anything other than EBM these days. While I take the
point, I would argue that this definition of 'truth' is somewhat different
from the usual dictionary definition. As David himself says, 'this is the
truth they're looking for', this is not the same as truth itself. Yes,
David, I am always prepared for disappointment!
Terry Aspray agrees the example of Jameson's writing I gave is something of
which we should be critical. In a laudable display of zeal, he has both
parsed and rewritten the sentence for my benefit. Many thanks! I think this
makes my point. This approach to the communication of knowledge, evidence
and 'truths' is unnecessarily obtuse and at times deliberately so to avoid
critical analysis. TRs work deserves a wider audience:
>"The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it {the
visual} has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its
attributes {the attributes of the visual} becomes an adjunct to that
{mindless fascination}, if it {the visual} is unwilling to betray its
object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the
attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless
effort to discipline
>the viewer)."
As to its meaning: I write without an ounce of academic philospophical
reading (I managed to get through the first three chapters of Sophie's
World!). I read this piece thus:
"What we see is an incomplete representation of the world, since sight
obscures our other senses and allows that which we see to dominate our
thoughts. Thinking about visual attributes of an object gets in the way of
true thought and this problem is compounded by the likelihood that what we
see often betrays the true object.
In film-making, it is appropriate to attempt to discipline (or educate) the
viewer in the limits of the medium. This has been attempted in minimalist
cinema, where image is not used as a means of overwhelming the audience.
However, in doing this, much energy is expended in the discipline of image
control at the cost of educating the viewer in seeing the objects (visible
and invisible) of the film."
I think Terry has convinced me that this sentence can be construed to have
some meaning, but who can read an entire book where each sentence may
require this kind of analysis! Perhaps this is an even greater crime that
writing complete drivel. Discuss.
Terry concludes: 'post-modernist thought should not be confused with
piss-poor English'. I think that confusion is inevitable. The Sokal saga
demonstrates that any old rubbish can be sufficiently obscured by tortuous
grammatic construction to convince a couple of journal editors that it must
mean something.
Sorry, I'm slipping back to my intellectual fascism.
Mike Bennett
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