03/06/2009

I Bet Somebody Else Thought of This before

You know how to postmodernists everything is text? Marriages? Text! Politics? Text! Physics? Text! And after having decided that all of the above is text, postmodernists then perform readings of marriages, politics, etc.

The idea that everything is text is, frankly, bonkers. Now, you might say that that's a pretty good one-word description of postmodernism, but I actually think declaring that everything is text is a pretty clever move. After all, if physics is text, then a Ph.D. in french literature makes you perfectly qualified to have strong opinions on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. And "uncertainty principle" sounds really postmodern, too!

Related link: Just in case there are readers who have never heard of it, here's Wikipedia on the Sokal affair, with lots of further links.

2 comments:

John Althouse Cohen said...

You might enjoy the postmodern essay generator.

LemmusLemmus said...

I'd seen it before, but thanks for reminding me. I must admit I only skimmed the deconstruction of rationality in the work of Joyce, though.