Engineer Deconstructs Literary Criticism 600
DNS-and-BIND writes "This is the story of one computer professional's explorations in the world of postmodern literary criticism. Wouldn't it be nice to work in a field where nobody can say you're wrong?"
/. editor staff? (Score:1, Funny)
Dont slashdot's editors work in that field already?
Job done. (Score:0, Funny)
"Wouldn't it be nice to work in a field where nobody can say you're wrong?"
Yeah, just become a Slashdot editor. Then you can mod down and delete any posts that disagree with you or complain about articles which get duped thrice in a day.
Happy Fucking Weekend, You cock-smoking tux-jerking asshats.
My favoritest paper ever! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hrmm (Score:3, Funny)
Happens all the time in meetings everywhere. The boss says something totally wrong and the room is silent.
What do you get ... (Score:5, Funny)
A: An offer you can't understand.
I've had two conversations in my life in which (Score:5, Funny)
The first case was with a techincal support representitive with a large company that had migrated alot of their after-hours support staff off site. (The company rhymes with Crisco, the off site location rhymes with blindia.)
I'm not in any way being critical of the country of origin, and I _know_ this person was speaking in english...but we weren't talking the same language. Curiously, his emails were completely understandable...it was the verbal conversation I couldn't grok.
The second was a meeting of high level Government IT staff, and some other members of government to discuss centralizing Internet services. Things were going well as we all introduced ourselves and stated what we wanted to get out of the collaboration. Then a lady came to the floor and spoke very eloquently for a good five minutes.
I have no clue what she said.
I asked about her afterwards and it turns out that she was a) a lawyer, b) an elected representative, and c) a manager.
Pretty much a lit crit Trifecta!
Naturally the group dissolved after a few meetings when it was determined it was too little too late and the existing issue too complex to put in one box.
Step-by-step (Score:2, Funny)
Step 2 -- Decide what the text says.
Step 3 -- Identify within the reading a distinction of some sort.
Step 4 -- Convert your chosen distinction into a "hierarchical opposition" by asserting that the text claims or presumes a particular primacy, superiority, privilege or importance to one side or the other of the distinction.
Step 5 -- Derive another reading of the text, one in which it is interpreted as referring to itself.
Step 6 -- ???
Step 7 -- Profit!
Science (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be nice to work in a field where nobody can say you're wrong?"
Unfortunately, the postmodernists have attempted to apply their idiotic claptrap to science, claiming the existence of such absurd concepts as "alternative scientific truths". What they miss is that science is empirical, and therefore deals with observed characteristics of the real world (i.e., "facts").
I've always wanted to throw one out of a plane over China, and yell after them as they plummet to their death: "how are you finding that Far-Eastern Gravitation?"
Finally it is on-topic to say: (Score:1, Funny)
I leave it as a study for the reader to deconstruct.
From the article: (Score:4, Funny)
"Another minor point, by the way, is that we don't say that we deconstruct the text but that the text deconstructs itself."
In soviet russia, perhaps.
Baz
Same here... (Score:3, Funny)
On a differnet note I called other tech support (this time in Florida) and tried to figure out how I could print from our ol' VM system. We were on the phone for 45 minutes, I tuned him out after 15 and just did screen captures and cut and pastes because he obviously had no idea what he was talking about, but sure had a lot of ideas. He seemed genuinely proud of the work he had just done for me, too! I hadn't the heart to tell him I did it the cut and paste way.
Re:Other way round (Score:3, Funny)
That's a field where everyone says you're wrong about everything.
Fast food?
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:5, Funny)
It's not a bug, it's a feature (Score:4, Funny)
Choose software engineering, then. There is no known defence against the "It's not a bug, it's a feature" counter attack.
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Wow, this is *old* (Score:2, Funny)
Get with the program
Re:You're wrong! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:an academic speaks (Score:5, Funny)
You're absolutley right. 90% of the patients I treat are total crap. They could have easily called a cab for their day old cough and sooner be in the ER, than called 911, get up from bed, unlock the door, crawl back into bed, and wait for the medics to find them in bed as if they are really sick.
90% of all the craps you take in you lifetime are also crap, the other 10% being explosive diarrhea, which is just really latin for brown water.
What's the point of this post? Well like 90% of all slashdot comments, it's crap, that will soon get moderated by people who waste their time modertaing crap!
Holy crap, that's alot of crap! We're swimming in it like a sea, which by the way....
--
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:5, Funny)
Form and function (Score:2, Funny)
Literary theory is an approach to textuality. If you posit that all knowledge that enters public sphere exists as text, then a study of the manipulation of meaning, knowledge, and interpretation is as politically necessary a venture as any I know.
And while one may complain that excessive jargon corrupts scholarship, we live in a world of jargon, coded language uttered by people with AUTHORity. It is the job of discourse theory to puncture the very heart of such authority. Thus, there are real world implications here. In fact, the whole project is being imported to secondary schools precisely because the goal of schools is to make questioning thinkers, not believers. Literary theory is a marvelous way to exercise such faculties.
Deconstruction is the most famous (and misused) reference to literary theory. It is the one most often used as an illustration of diffuse, pointless inquiry. If every person who studies theory hasn't heard this said a thousand times, then we have never heard it once. Frankly, this article it is just an immature attempt to contribute to field with an already substantial knowledge base.
This article adds nothing to it.
The Sex Factor (Score:4, Funny)
Before becoming a software engineer I got a bachelors in psychology. While in college I went to a conference on phenomenology. I had taken a couple courses on the subject and thought I had a handle on it. However, the first speaker I went to was completely incomprehensible to me. Try as I might I could not put more than three sequential words of his together into anything that made any sense. At first I questioned my intelligence, but eventually I came to the conclussion that it was all a bunch of blather.
Standing next to me (it was standing room only) was a hot chick I had spoken to prior to the talk. She was looking up at him like he was the most brilliant man alive, making little nods and short buzzing noises of agreement. I wanted to have sex with her, and this led to my moral transgression.
After he was done speaking she gushed about how brilliant he was. Deep down I wanted to ask her if she could explain what gave her that impression, but instead I agreed with her. My little head was doing the thinking. I even spouted back some of the junk he had said in order to try to impress her.
No...I did not end up having sex with her. She went off to join the groupies surrounding the speaker, and I was left alone in my shame. I had helped to perpetuate the BS.
Postmodernism Generator (Score:3, Funny)
The Expression of Fatal flaw: The textual paradigm of consensus in the works of Rushdie
Hans Q. Dahmus
Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1. Consensuses of failure
"Sexual identity is part of the paradigm of truth," says Derrida. But an abundance of dematerialisms concerning the textual paradigm of consensus may be discovered.
"Society is intrinsically elitist," says Lyotard; however, according to Hanfkopf[1] , it is not so much society that is intrinsically elitist, but rather the dialectic of society. Precapitalist narrative states that art is part of the failure of culture, but only if the premise of dialectic subdeconstructivist theory is invalid. Therefore, the main theme of Pickett's[2] analysis of neodialectic cultural theory is a mythopoetical paradox.
Hanfkopf[3] suggests that we have to choose between dialectic subdeconstructivist theory and the subcapitalist paradigm of context. However, Debord uses the term 'dialectic postcultural theory' to denote the defining characteristic, and subsequent genre, of capitalist class.
Marx's critique of dialectic subdeconstructivist theory holds that art serves to reinforce sexism. In a sense, the subject is interpolated into a subdialectic desublimation that includes reality as a totality.
Sartre uses the term 'dialectic subdeconstructivist theory' to denote not, in fact, discourse, but postdiscourse. Thus, the characteristic theme of the works of Burroughs is the role of the participant as artist.
2. Realism and capitalist presemanticist theory
The main theme of Abian's[4] essay on capitalist presemanticist theory is the difference between society and class. The subject is contextualised into a Derridaist reading that includes consciousness as a paradox. However, Foucault uses the term 'capitalist presemanticist theory' to denote the meaninglessness, and some would say the defining characteristic, of textual sexual identity.
Subconstructivist theory suggests that consensus comes from communication. It could be said that the subject is interpolated into a capitalist presemanticist theory that includes language as a whole.
If the textual paradigm of consensus holds, the works of Gaiman are postmodern. Therefore, Debord uses the term 'cultural Marxism' to denote the role of the poet as artist. Lyotard suggests the use of capitalist presemanticist theory to read narrativity. However, in The Books of Magic, Gaiman affirms realism; in Neverwhere, however, he denies capitalist presemanticist theory.
1. Hanfkopf, A. B. ed. (1978) Realism in the works of Burroughs. Panic Button Books
2. Pickett, V. P. A. (1981) The Genre of Narrative: The textual paradigm of consensus and realism. Loompanics
3. Hanfkopf, R. ed. (1996) Realism in the works of McLaren. And/Or Press
4. Abian, N. D. F. (1970) The Stone Sky: The textual paradigm of consensus in the works of Gaiman. Panic Button Books
I'd find this a whole lot funnier if... (Score:1, Funny)
Man, once your field has produced that level of repeated stupidity, you don't have leave to say sh1t about anybody else's failure to make sense!
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:2, Funny)
Finnegans wake? Proofreading? The story I remember is that Joyce sent the book off to be retyped with the hope of adding errors that he hadn't thought of himself.
A similar stunt was pulled with "lesbian sheep" (Score:3, Funny)
I understand that a similar stunt was once pulled on a women's studies department with a bogus article about lesbian behavior in sheep.
Background required... Mating behavior in normal sheep is:
- The ram kicks the sheep in the side.
- If the sheep is not in heat, she moves away.
- If the sheep is in heat, she responds by holding still.
- Upon determining that kicking the sheep in the side causes her to hold still, the ram mounts her.
Therefore, if there WERE a lesbian sheep, she would demonstrate her attraction to another sheep by holding still - which would be essentially indistinguishable from disintrest. This would make it VERY difficult to determine whether lesbian sheep actually exist.
So a young lady who was thoroughly fed up with the women's studies department put her tongue firmly in cheek, wrote this up, and submitted it.
Of course the department didn't recognize they were being put on and made quite a big thing about this brilliant paper by their new star student. B-)
Re:Cut-throat literati (Score:3, Funny)
Which isn't entirely unreasonable.
You see, while the hard sciences are all about controlling and manipulating the real world, the social sciences are all about controlling and manipulating other people.
So of COURSE there is a "right" and "wrong" to things like deconstructionism. "Right" is "manipulating the other members of the department into granting you high status".