Tagged: Postmodernism

Language vs. Thought

A note on Derrida and the postmoderns.– Difficult language is sometimes necessary to communicate thought. However, difficulty, in the sense of varying degrees of opaqueness or indecipherability, must never be the goal, for the simple reason that language must never be the goal. To make language itself the goal of writing is analogous to making pots and utensils the goal of cooking. This...

Postmodernity vs. Wisdom

A disagreement which might have been overheard in every humanities and social sciences faculty in every university in the advanced world, before disagreement was banned on grounds of progressive sensitivity: Postmodern Relativist: The historical belief in absolute truth has caused all our wars, inequality, and prejudice. Therefore, absolutism must be rejected in order to overcome these harmful effects at last. Rational Animal: But...

Notes on Critical Method

A few days ago, I offered my interpretation of Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony without having listened to one word of it. In the event that someone might have found this approach unsatisfactory — might have seen my lack of familiarity with any of Mueller’s words as a mere oversight or deficiency on my part — I offer the following explanation and defense of...

Weekend Reflection: Against Parentheses

The following is my little commentary on today’s university climate, the modern academic journal “culture,” and postmodernism. It was first published, under a pseudonym suited to the subject matter, in an undeservingly short-lived satirical journal, The American Drivel Review, back in 2007. Against Parentheses by Jacques de Rigueur Parenthetical remarks (by which, I must stipulate, I mean strictly such comments, asides, qualifications, etc.,...