How to write postmodern
Sociologist Stephen Katz explains how to write postmodern. Instead of writing
We should listen to the views of people outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural biases that affect us
which he describes as "honest but dull," you should learn to write proper postmodern sentences like
We should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities
I wished it was a joke, but actually many in the social sciences and humanities do write like that. And it's not merely for rhetorical effect. Many students reading the obscure texts of postmodernists think there is something wrong with them; that they are just not clever enough to get it. It is true that sometimes texts are difficult to read because the subject is deep and complex. With postmodernists, that is not the case.
As Sokal demonstrated quite some years ago, postmodernists write obscure because if what they wanted to write was put down in clear terms, people would see it was nonsense.
I found the Katz article through metafilter.
10:16:12 PM 
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