Exactly - if you can't figure it out, that means she "must be smarter than you." Kinda of a twist on the logical fallacy "appeal to authority" - only it's a false "I defer to authority" which really isn't an authority at all. Seems that it is another logical consequence to the failed government school model "sit down and shut up while I tell you your opinion" that makes so many die-hard CNN and MSNBC bots.
Still a logical fallacy. Brava to them for coming up with a sort-of new one.
Yep. It’s been a principal tool of the postmodernists for decades. Deliberately create an impenetrable thicket of needlessly obscure terms, then claim anyone who thinks it’s rubbish is just too dumb to understand it. “Artists” have used the same hustle for even longer than academics.
It makes a certain kind of sense when you realize that the entire postmodern exercise in art, philosophy, academics in general, and now politics, is to destroy morals, norms, all of Western civilization, and every institution, custom, tradition or truth associated with them. It’s all about contempt for those not anointed with the deep moral clarity of the perpetrators.
I gave the diagramming a try...just removing the basic prepositional phrases left this piece of nonsensical garbage:
"The move is understood to structure social relations to a view in which power relations are subject brought the question and marked a shift that takes structural totalities to one in which the insights inaugurate a renewed conception as bound up"
It can't be diagrammed, as there is no independent clause anywhere in that mess.
You definitely win the prize! I’d have to consult an old textbook to even try tackling that sentence or whatever it is. It’s not meant to communicate so much as to intimidate.
You're giving Harris too much credit for putting a noun and verb together that make sense. Literacy and speech are not strong suits in the Biden Administration.
I feel like James Lindsay is her only equal in terms of dense prose.... but I often like what he has to say, just wish I was smarter to stick with his articles all the way through. Maybe I need a Lindsay interpreter.
I like that approach. "Eliminate all free radicals" as James Bond once said.
One thing I notice on the internet is how much of it is narrative or conversational - written the way the author talks, rather than in clear, concise exposition. I'm just as guilty. But when I see it in someone who is paid to write for a living writing this way, I cringe for the future.
I read Lindsay as logical, but often needing to be unpacked. The sentences make sense, but you may have to pause and look up terms or other background info. Butler just doesn’t make sense because she is deliberately vague and deliberately uses words that she herself has made up and/or uses words in different ways than anyone else does. In this way, she is in control of the narrative—forever—because the narrative is whatever she wants it to be on any given day. She’s made herself the irreplaceable guru of a cult.
"Power was seen as static in institutions based on things like wealth. Now it's seen as dynamic due to patterns in the way its expressed thanks to work by (not cited). Which showed faults with the static Althuserrian theory."
Original:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Funnily enough the entire thing becomes easier to understand with a bit of proper punctuation and semantic closure. I dare you to tell me that in spite of its ludicrous jargon, the bottom isn't vastly more legible.
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation were arrived at through the study of their rearticulation.
Rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory; that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects - to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Reading her extremely long run on sentence made my head hurt. Too early in the morning for that.
And to be perfectly honest? I didn’t understand at all what that sentence even meant. Lol.
That’s the whole point. Make it needlessly complex.
It is anti-rational and if you are paying for your kid to go to universities this is the horse shit they are getting, just don't do it.
Butler didn’t understand it, but, for her audience it matters not. And besides, I cannot diagram that word salad, so…
Exactly - if you can't figure it out, that means she "must be smarter than you." Kinda of a twist on the logical fallacy "appeal to authority" - only it's a false "I defer to authority" which really isn't an authority at all. Seems that it is another logical consequence to the failed government school model "sit down and shut up while I tell you your opinion" that makes so many die-hard CNN and MSNBC bots.
Still a logical fallacy. Brava to them for coming up with a sort-of new one.
Yep. It’s been a principal tool of the postmodernists for decades. Deliberately create an impenetrable thicket of needlessly obscure terms, then claim anyone who thinks it’s rubbish is just too dumb to understand it. “Artists” have used the same hustle for even longer than academics.
It makes a certain kind of sense when you realize that the entire postmodern exercise in art, philosophy, academics in general, and now politics, is to destroy morals, norms, all of Western civilization, and every institution, custom, tradition or truth associated with them. It’s all about contempt for those not anointed with the deep moral clarity of the perpetrators.
If you can't explain it to a nine yr old it is nonsense.
You really should say their deep "amoral" clarity. But good comment, nonetheless.
Remember Maxwell Smart, Agent 86?
I gave the diagramming a try...just removing the basic prepositional phrases left this piece of nonsensical garbage:
"The move is understood to structure social relations to a view in which power relations are subject brought the question and marked a shift that takes structural totalities to one in which the insights inaugurate a renewed conception as bound up"
It can't be diagrammed, as there is no independent clause anywhere in that mess.
You definitely win the prize! I’d have to consult an old textbook to even try tackling that sentence or whatever it is. It’s not meant to communicate so much as to intimidate.
Hilarious, thank you!
Good job! But I still don’t know what it means.
VP Harris must be her ghost writer.
You're giving Harris too much credit for putting a noun and verb together that make sense. Literacy and speech are not strong suits in the Biden Administration.
It's all smoke and mirrors.
A lot of circling back to restate the lies in another way.
I feel like James Lindsay is her only equal in terms of dense prose.... but I often like what he has to say, just wish I was smarter to stick with his articles all the way through. Maybe I need a Lindsay interpreter.
Maybe they should write as my freshman HS teacher advocated in 1960. Short declarative sentences and get rid of half the adverbs and adjectives.
I like that approach. "Eliminate all free radicals" as James Bond once said.
One thing I notice on the internet is how much of it is narrative or conversational - written the way the author talks, rather than in clear, concise exposition. I'm just as guilty. But when I see it in someone who is paid to write for a living writing this way, I cringe for the future.
I read Lindsay as logical, but often needing to be unpacked. The sentences make sense, but you may have to pause and look up terms or other background info. Butler just doesn’t make sense because she is deliberately vague and deliberately uses words that she herself has made up and/or uses words in different ways than anyone else does. In this way, she is in control of the narrative—forever—because the narrative is whatever she wants it to be on any given day. She’s made herself the irreplaceable guru of a cult.
Try Henry James ... his work is of similar, ah, density.
Here is what it means.
"Power was seen as static in institutions based on things like wealth. Now it's seen as dynamic due to patterns in the way its expressed thanks to work by (not cited). Which showed faults with the static Althuserrian theory."
Original:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Funnily enough the entire thing becomes easier to understand with a bit of proper punctuation and semantic closure. I dare you to tell me that in spite of its ludicrous jargon, the bottom isn't vastly more legible.
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation were arrived at through the study of their rearticulation.
Rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory; that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects - to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Word salad, much like VP Harris.