Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Is this paragraph a crime against humanity?

Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self). This is the real exteriority of the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision of the shining of the light breaking the dark is the other-identity of the light. The precision of the absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in “self-alienation,” not “self-identity, itself in self-alienation” “released” in and by “otherness,” and “actual other,” “itself,” not the abysmal inversion of the light, the reality of the darkness equivocally, absolute identity equivocally predicated of the self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of identity which is the identification person-self).

This is one of the winners of the 1998 (and sadly last) Bad Writing Contest:

Certainly, the writer should be punished severely for such absurdly pretentious rubbish. It may even be meaningless rubbish, but who'd know?

As the person who submitted this for the contest wrote, the entire book it is taken from is “absolutely, unequivocally incomprehensible.”

But the question I suppose is, why would an ostensibly intelligent person write like this in the first place?

I realise the usual excuse is that "theory (as in critical theory) is hard" and therefore writing about it will be hard to read.

Of course this is complete bullshit. Your modern literary or critical theorist is nothing more than a puffed up version of someone we've all had the misfortune to run into at a party - the crashing bore who tries to show how clever he is by using a lot of big words, when actual communication would have been easier and clearer with simpler and more precise language.

These people are to a man and a woman a bunch of tossers.

It's even worse that in many cases these are the very same people who are now responsible for writing school curricula.

And associated article originally published in The Wall Street Journal:

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

No comments: