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?"
Another exploration into post-modernist literature (Score:5, Interesting)
An article on "Deconstructing Deconstructionism" (Score:5, Interesting)
Crikey!
Cut-throat literati (Score:4, Interesting)
You haven't been around any English departments, have you? My wife has an MA in English, and it sounds like the department was pretty vicious.
I'd argue that it's a lot harder being in a field with "soft" realities. Anything you say is subject to criticism, and it's really hard to "prove" you're right. I'll take an objective field, where I can demonstrate truth or falsehood irrefutably, any day. (I know that's an overstatment: you can always debate the meaning of experimental results. But you get the idea.)
Must see link (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the following paragraph from the article:
Now read an essay by the postmodernism generator. Can you tell the difference? ;-)
Re:Cut-throat literati (Score:2, Interesting)
Notes on postmodern programming (Score:2, Interesting)
Quite interesting and amusing though.
Re:Cut-throat literati (Score:4, Interesting)
(Anyway, if humanities folk cross the line into any sort of political correctness, believe me that there won't be any reticence about declaring them "wrong", then.)
Re:self-eating watermelon (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:4, Interesting)
in said scene, a literary critic develops a program to count the frequency of words in a given book (ignoring prepositions, pronouns and the like) and then display the 20 most and least frequent words. the theory is that the core concept of the book can be gleaned by simply reading these lists.
now i have tried this myself and can say, while it does not work to the level stated by calvino, it does certainly give you a feel for the book. different genres have noticable word distributions especially. it's easy to identify, say, a western or sci-fi or romance novel from these lists.
Should Computer Scientists Read Derrida? (Score:3, Interesting)
Should Computer Scientists Read Derrida? that i can only recommend. Unlike the usual Deconstruction-Bashers that don't bother to understand what Deconstruction is about, this text, written by mathematician, is pretty clued up!
Re:An article on "Deconstructing Deconstructionism (Score:5, Interesting)
When you deconstuct a work, you create a paper which is impossible to fail on a theoretical basis, because each deconstruction is in fact its own theoretical entity. It's very hard to say, objectively, that a deconstruction is "wrong." And therefore, in the eyes of many professors, your grade on this paper can only be judged on its logical progression and its written style.
In short: deconstructions can be interesting, can be fun, and show off a person's analytical and prosaic talents. But no, they aren't going to further the "intellectual" pursuit of writing. But this is no different from a forensics meet, where people argue a position they themselves may not hold, to showcase their oration and research talents. This is no different from a poetry slam or rap battle, where people read disconnected passages to gain a subjective edge over other poets. And it's certainly no different from engineers engaging in robot battles, code obfuscation contests, or blog entries about how literary criticism is bullshit.
Incidentally, while deconstructionists can never be wrong because they write their own assumptions, literary critics in general CAN be. In fact, one of my favorite exercises in my 350 level discourse class was to rebutt a literary criticism from the New York Times magazine. Literary critics make mistakes in logic, levy unfair comparisons and make mistakes of intent all the time, and these often result in an unlikely hypothesis being legitimized. Hence the popularity of Ayn Rand!
Re:Engineer's Disease (Score:4, Interesting)
Did he misrepresent himself?
Did his joke go unnoticed?
I agree with you that there are some engineering fruitcakes out there, but this may not be one of them.
A creative, educated, "non-expert" perspective in a field can sometimes be very valuable. For instance, journalists. In tech, we know they're often full of garbage, but they do say the odd thing, which when interpreted by somebody with a deeper technical understanding can be valuable.
Maybe a better example is the absurd blithering of a really bright first-year student.
Re:Cut-throat literati (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An article on "Deconstructing Deconstructionism (Score:2, Interesting)
> engineers engaging in robot battles
Hm. I wouldn't lump this in with the obfuscated code contests. Programming a Robocode [ibm.com] bot, for example, is "clever fun", yes, but it's also a good exercise in learning more about search and evade techniques, trig, and so forth.
A bot programmer is bound by the constraints of the bot environment - time allowed for each move, effect of a hit, etc - and thus must deal with those constraints to produce an effective bot. And the bots themselves are certainly "capable of being wrong" in that a poorly written bot will usually be crushed by the better ones.
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:2, Interesting)
Sokal published a follow-up to the article describing all the intentional bogosity used in it, an article which those selfsame self-deceived editors rejected as "not meeting intellectual standards".
The editors saw something worthwhile to themselves, it is true: an opportunity to preen their feathers and strut their scientific sophistication in public. That the principles of postmodernism failed to disclose to them the hook inside the bait, a hook obvious to most geeks who read the original article, oughtn't to escape your attention.
Another thing to consider is, postmodernists claim to be able to deconstruct anything. That goes for your post, as well. You have no standing to insist that it means any particular thing, if I want to see it otherwise.
It's a goose-and-gander thing.
Re:An article on "Deconstructing Deconstructionism (Score:4, Interesting)
So we went to listen to him speak (unfortunately not on deconstruction, but she was still very excited to have the chance to hear him). We left the Town Hall after the seminar and my wife said to me "Dammit, now I can't dislike him any more, he's so nice". A few seconds pause, then "But he's still wrong about deconstruction".
Re:Just a reminder... (Score:4, Interesting)
About a year ago, my parents gave me an amusing little animatronic toy which (allegedy) responded to voice commands. "Kuma! Sing me a song!" you'd say, and its little lights would flash and it would play a tinny little melody. Then you'd say "Kuma! Hing freeb gafrob nok!"
Reasonable conclusion: Kuma cannot differentiate English from nonsense.
Unreasonable conclusion: All English is nonsense.
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm probably obtuse, but -- no, I still don't understand. Your point is that Sokal is making a similar argument, right? And is his argument invalid?
My spin is just the opposite of his. If I'm a Social Thought editor, the argument I make (out of sincerity or out of damage control, as the case may be) is this: all this talk of "trust" and "deception" is irrelevant. Dr. Sokal submitted a provocative article and we published it. He can declare it to be gibberish, but that no more invalidates our decision than any other instance in which a reader declares some text to be nonsensical.
To put it differently, my reaction is the same as Sokal's "Or are they more deferent to the so-called ``cultural authority of technoscience'' than they would care to admit?" I'm just surprised that they gave up so easily.
Semiotics For Beginners (Score:4, Interesting)
After some searching, I found Semiotics for Begineers [aber.ac.uk], which was a pretty good introduction to the field, and written with enough clarity that even this programmer could figure out the strange language. Go give it a try.
It might also help you as a programmer. We use esoteric language all the time, like '\n', 0xDEADBEEF, deques and queues, stdout, stderr, stdlog, etc. etc., and semiotics tries to explain how these somewhat random characters can be attached to ideas, so that our community can send the characters back and forth to communicate the ideas. However, if it comes to an assembler class vs. a semiotics class, please take the assembler class.
Re:Engineer's Disease (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't entirely disagree with you, but... Maybe it's because engineers and scientists live in a world where there's usually a clear distinction between what's correct and what's not, and an emphasis of substance over form. They're expected to actually know what they're talking about, and it's usually painfully obvious if they don't. That's why you'll never hear about a humanities prof sneaking a nonsensical paper into, say, Physical Review Letters as a joke.
On the other hand, I've met and seen people insulted by plenty of computer geeks who - almost uniquely among professionals - seem to think that their little sub-island of knowledge is the only one by which true intelligence is measured, and will take every opportunity to let you know this. I almost never encounter that attitude with scientists, lawyers, or physicians. Must have something to do with maturity and social skills, but in my observation puberty is not the cure.
Hofstadter and the 5-Step Prescription (Score:3, Interesting)
In the spirit of "postmodern literary criticism" I choose the essay itself as my "text" and here are the exciting results.
Well, I tried to see if I could "see into" the essay as a satire and a wicked, though blunt, assessment of the current administration. I thought that the essay was a coded satire and similar to the work of Jonathan Swift, but without the humor and imagination. (Full Disclosure - I am an Engineer by training.) So here my application of the 5-Step methodology to "deconstructing" the essay.
I really don't know what Godel wrote but I have read an interpretation of it via Douglas Hofstadter's - Godel, Escher, Bach. Here is where I do find the similarities in the prescription laid out by Hofstadter and in the essay.
And here is where I can extend beyond mere literature into the nature of politics, govt, and the current administration.
True, it doesn't matter if I choose to focus on the current administration, or the mad-cow outbreak. The choice of the subject is actually one of the less important decisions that I have to make.
It is very interesting that such a standard postmodernist tactic for ducking criticism was used by Mr. Donald Rumsfeld who was awarded the prize of 'Foot in mouth' prize for [cnn.com] for it, and actually came very close to being awarded the "Man of the Year" by Time Magazine ! (Rummy declined honor as 'Person of the Year [hillnews.com]) His award winning poem was trying to create a metaphysical confusion by the following :
Re:Must see link (Score:3, Interesting)
A techno jargon generator would produce text that would seem equally comprehensible/incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the definitions of the terms used. Just because I don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, what's interesting about the article is that it recounts the author's attempt to find out if literary criticism has content or not.
Re:An article on "Deconstructing Deconstructionism (Score:3, Interesting)
First, the usual disclaimer: This is a tough subject, and English is not my native language. All errors in logic and expression result from that.
That article you linked to is terrible, and the logic behind it is false or non-existant. And apparently not very honest: The author attacks deconstruction for confusing artificiality with convention and deceptive and false. However, his own argument against it is dependent on the same confusion.
Even if "all language systems are conventional" (this can't be called a "major tenet of deconstruction," as the author claims. The major tenet would be that all language is artificial, and that's something completely different.) necessarily must be a conventional statement if the statement is true, wouldn't in itself make it a self-contradictory statement. It would merely make it part of the same hermetic, conventional, language system. Now, this language system might be quite self-contradictory, and deconstruction is the philosophy of self-contradicion in the language systems, so the author isn't so far off. He just avoids the real issues of deconstruction, which have nothing to do with convention, and everything to do with artificiality.
Ferdinand de Saussure is important here, but not in the way the author thinks. The idea that the relationship between signifier (expression) and signified (meaning) is arbitrary does not lead to that meaning has "nothing to do with reality," but it does lead to the obvious fact that the two (meaning/reality) are different. What we think of the world is not the world. That should be pretty obvious: The word "I" is not the same as the person who utters "I." That a word is a fact about language, and not a fact about the world, follows from this. "Falsely," the author claims, but without any argument.
He goes on to state that Derrida's "most controversial idea," that "linguistic meaning is fundamentally indeterminate," means the same as "I cannot utter a word of English." This is plain bad logic, and also not very good rhetoric. A better analogue would be "You don't understand a word of what Derrida is saying," and that statement would be true (if said to the author of the article).
This article's main tenet (n : a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof), is as you quote: Deconstruction is a theory that is beyond being intellectually bankrupt -- it is intellectually meaningless and thus had no intellectual capital to begin with!, and the author goes out to scare people away from those who do not share that doctrine by spewing a lot of nonsense.
His main argument seems to be that Derrida doesn't follow his "master" Saussure in everything, and that is somehow "illogical", then he rounds off with concluding that "there is indeed one way to God," which he also means is "epistemologically self-evident." This article is just a bunch of anti-anti-religious propaganda. He's scared that deconstruction will destroy Authority, not truth.
Excellent article (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the meat of the article, and, to my mind, accurately picks out that which is of value in the humanities.
As far as I'm concerned, the humanities need a major overhaul. Those majoring in english or art should have their science requirements increased beyond whatever they are now. At the same time, I think the sciency types of the world should be similarly forced to undertake a number of humanities courses. But the humanities teachers should be forced to explain themselves in terms as simple, obvious, and concise as the author did above.
Now, back to my botany studies...
Science is prediction, not explaination (Score:3, Interesting)
The "soft" position is unpopular because it leads to the conclusion that many "sciences" aren't. Psychology, sociology, and most of economics lose out. So do the "retrospective" fields, like paleontology. They're considered belief systems, not sciences. Since there are more people in those fields than in the hard sciences, this is an unpopular position.
Engineering makes it clear which position is right. Engineering is based entirely on results which are experimentally falsifiable. Only results tested by experiments which could fail, but didn't, have predictive power. Engineering is about prediction. Without prediction there is no reliability.
If it's a bunch of crap, why do people do it? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, why do they do it? Tenure. Publish or perish. Truly original, basic research in the humanities is so rare that they have decided that it isn't possible and make shit up instead. Not only that but the shit has to conform to the dominant style.
It all started with the rise of feminism in academia during the late sixties. Again some of the original feminist works are great and society is a better place because they were written. However instead of accepting that and moving on to other aspects of society the same paradigm of these original works was applied to every conceivable group of people in every conceivable area.
This approach has some validity and occurs in other fields as well (e.g. studying the movements due to gravity of every type of thing), but in the humanities it is usually the case that they are doing something comparable to using a theory of electro-magnetic force to explain the movement of the stars. It's either a clear misapplication of the theory or the explanatory value of the theory in that circumstance is miniscule.
The paradigm? Show how this group could have possibly been oppressed. If you are lucky, for maximum emotional effect, you'll be able to show how the opressed were actually superior to the oppressors.
For a truly wonderful example of this kind of scholarship, read anything by Judith Butler.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to say that there isn't some worthwhile stuff going on, but the demand that professors produce research creates the perfect evironment for pointless and fraudulent research. And that's true for all disciplines.
It all comes back to money. If the universities produce more research, they get more money (e.g. grants, fellowships, etc).
RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
true with TV news anchors and newspaper writers (Score:2, Interesting)
Tolkien (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case, in my softmore year, we were assigned the hobbit which we had to read, and then explain what the book was really about. Aside from having read the book several times prior to the class, I happened to have the first official U.S. priting, which had a rather extensive introductory letter by tolkien. Aside from the very beginning, which talked about how this was the first printing, and not to purchase the book from other U.S. publishers (they did not have the rights to publish it and were not giving him residuals) he went on to discuss the meaning of the book -- speciffically, the entire lack thereof. He disavowed the book being a metaphore for anything, and asked the reader to accept it for what is was - a story, a flight of fancy, a fantasy which he wrote for nothing other than the purpose of enjoyment. I photocopied the introducion, wrote a quick appology for not disecting the meaning of the book considering that I felt it would be disrespectfull of the author to read meaning into it when he has specifically asked his readers not to. I got a D-.
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever seen The Princess Bride? Remember the scene where the Prince is about to toast and drink with Wallace Shawn's character Vizzini the "intellectual" leader of the "bad guys". The scene's set up spawns a monologue for Vizzini wherein he thinks aloud about who's going to be a victim of "Iocaine" poison. His rationalizations about which goblet to pick begin with an attempt to read The Prince and spin off into absurdity without ever completely loosing a thread of "smart sounding" logic. The humor of the scene stems from Vizzini's solipsitic outsmarting of himself.
I think most of the publication that came from this literary/cultural movement should be perceived as we are supposed to perceive Vizzini. The character died because he was so enamoured with his own ability to "talk smart" that he lost sight of the original problem.
I remember reading the article /. is pointing out here a long time ago (this may be a dupe). The points made about the self-containment of the Humanities' academic community are worth as much as Sokal's example. A mutual admiration society whos members compete for the captain's chair in the Flying Wedge of avant garde literary criticism is bound to go a little nuts.
Re:Science (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank you for pointing this out. As a graduate student in philosophy with an interest in continental philosophy (including postmodernism), I've had to deal with numerous attacks of the sort used in this article, claiming that postmodern thought is just intellectual posturing with no real content. These criticisms are particularly vehement coming from people in more technically oriented fields, who are often upset because continental philosophy doesn't follow the same Scientific Method they've been spoon-fed since middle school. They then go on to criticize the movement for not adhering to the standards of a world-view which it is trying to move beyond. It's a bit like someone saying Einsteinian physics is nonsense because it can't be reduced to Newton's laws.
Just to maintain my
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:3, Interesting)
"If language was really so easy to break down, analyse and interpret in a definitive matter, why is it that NLP is still in its infancy...?"
You don't need to be a deconstructionist to parse natural language. NLP is still in its infancy because common sense is often necessary to remove syntactic and semantic ambiguities.
"Science would benefit from the application of deconstruction and any other theory that might help it sort out what it means to claim that something is true, valid or meaningful."
Scientists aren't fools; they understand a theory as an interpretation of evidence, and consciously use the word "true" as a brief way of saying "so likely as to lie beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt." This understanding is the basis of the scientific method and is essential for success in academia (even though silly politics are too).
"Is it possible that there are two versions of science, both true? I suppose. Maybe particle/wave theory is an example. Maybe the controversies in superstring theory are other examples."
No. Wave/Particle duality is part of a single theory that is half wrong when either component is taken away. Controversies in String Theory are aesthetic because all String Theorists agree that future experiments, as difficult as they will be to devise and conduct, are necessary if the theory is to hold water. More generally, in the scientific community all disagreements about a theory are aesthetic: they vanish when the theory is shown to predict the behavior of a system better than the prevailing one.
"language is not capable of specificity"
You can never completely eliminate the possibility of being misinterpreted, but you can get arbitrarily close. In other words, you're theoretically right but practically wrong.
"with jargon, social and cultural perspectives, indeterminacy of the writer and reader, etc, the quest for the grand unified theory is not possible."
Is it possible that your claim is incorrect? If so, then it is possible that "the quest for the grand unified theory" is possible. If it's possible that it's possible, then it's possible. So the remotest possibility of folly renders this claim completely wrong.
If you would argue that this claim must be absolutely correct, you won't get my vote without a fairly rigorous proof.
Instead I'll assume that by "not possible" you mean "highly unlikely". I'll counter that with the observation that misunderstandings in the scientific community are naturally ironed out by the rigor that scientists employ when making their arguments.
In particular, jargon is an important part of that rigor rather than a hindrance to it. I believe it was you who wrote, "Jargon is necessary to identify complex (or specific) ideas in a minimal amount of words/time." (So is language capable of specificity or not?)
Your entire argument is so strongly based on the need to take great care when proclaiming something to be true that I'm surprised you were so bold in this final claim. More than anything else, this is what has me thinking you're a troll.
Alright, I've had my fun. If you meant all of the above sincerely, I apologize for calling you a troll.
Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat (Score:3, Interesting)