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Postmodernism and postmodernity describe very complex intellectual and artistic practices. The periodic belittling of these cultural formations by people who do

Postmodernism and postmodernity describe very complex intellectual and artistic practices. The periodic belittling of these cultural formations by people who do not well understand them is unbecoming and tiresome. The Sokal affair gets mentioned in threads such as this. But anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that _Social Text_'s editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence. It puzzles and saddens me that so many intelligent scientists and empiricists repeatedly point to such instances of "postmodernity" as proof that the postmodern emperor has no clothes because such a broad statement is simply untrue. The work of many of late Twentieth Century philosophy by figures such as Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigary, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, and many many more deserve serious studied contemplation. Their work is not easy to understand and, yes, they can be interpreted in many different ways. They are not randomized strings of insider shibboleths. Occasionally propagating "postmodern" meme generators is a childish form of territorial demarcation and we would all--humanists, scientists, and intellectuals of all kinds--be better off and richer if they stopped serving as propaganda that postmodernity has no cultural or intellectual value. EDIT: grammar, readability, spelling. Added penultimate, single-sentence paragraph.

danharaj 10y ago
Really the best "criticism" of postmodern thought is that once you've gone through and deconstructed everything and reduced the world to power relations, it doesn't give you much indication what you can do about it. Of course, that's not what most postmodern thinkers set out to do. Dismantling the present is necessary for imagining the future.
elliotec 10y ago
Gotta say, this comment itself reads like it was written by the postmodern generator
- foldr 10y ago
  No it doesn't. Come on, that's not a constructive response to a perfectly articulate comment.
  - azeirah 10y ago
    To people who don't know anything about postmodernism (i.e. me), it certainly does.
    - foldr 10y ago
      The comment doesn't say anything about the content of postmodernist thought, so I can't see why you would say that. It's completely intelligible, and it's a bit childish to pretend otherwise.
- k_lander 10y ago
  i wasn't sure if it was sarcasm either
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  I thought it was copy/paste from the site.. until I realized he was serious. Poe's Law in action.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  Really? I mean it uses some slightly unusual words (shibboleth, demarcation, unbecoming) but these are hardly technical terms, you'll find them in stories for children or teenagers. There are no complex or difficult sentences in there.
zwischenzug 10y ago
Humanities student-turned software engineer here. Was once into PoMo studies. I don't know about the Social Text bullying issue (I'd never heard of Social Text, so I didn't think its publication that significant), but Sokal's Intellectual Impostures picks apart most of those writers' abuse of scientific concepts extremely fairly and sensitively. He takes great care not to comment on their philosophical writing outside of its scientific content, and even then takes care to distinguish between literal and metaphorical use.
- zwischenzug 10y ago
  Also, I see little evidence of the 'bullying' mentioned here. Do you have any evidence to share? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair#Publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair#Publication
- mistersquid 10y ago
  I was mistaken about the peer review, as _Social Text_ was not peer-reviewed. The article I was remembering discusses how Sokal refused to make the edits requested by _Social Text_'s editors. [0] > Having established an interest in Sokal's article, we did > ask him informally to revise the piece. We requested him (a) > to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and > (b) to excise most of his footnotes. Sokal seemed resistant > to any revisions, and indeed insisted on retaining almost > all of his footnotes and bibliographic apparatus on the > grounds that his peers, in science, expected extensive > documentation of this sort. Judging from his response, it > was clear that his article would appear as is, or not at > all. At this point, Sokal was designated as a "difficult, > uncooperative author," a category well known to journal > editors. We judged his article too much trouble to publish, > not yet on the reject pile, perhaps of sufficient interest > to readers if published in the company of related articles. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html
  - FabHK 10y ago
    It is understandable that Sokal was hesitant to remove the footnotes: they contain many of the best jokes and outrageous postmodern quotes (and also make it quite clear to any reader with a basic knowledge of the sciences that this was not meant seriously).
camdenlock 10y ago
Oh, wow. Found the grad student. Maybe this postmodernist word salad phenomenon is the result of humanities students and professors (mistakenly) thinking that their area of study contains no more legitimate things to investigate. Consequently, we're now seeing this mere intellect signaling being passed off as worthwhile content. Come on. You can do better.
- adpoe 10y ago
  Didn't go to grad school for this stuff, but I did study it in undergrad. I wrote dozens of papers like this, and they always got great marks. For me, the reason I did it was simple: if you want good grades/academic-approval in this field... writing like that works! I do think there is signaling going on--if your paper has the 'gestalt' of what a 'good paper' looks like, then you get an A. Because you 'get it'. Similar signaling happens in all fields though, including software. For instance, when you're looking at a coder's website/github/resume, there are certain things hiring committees look for before passing on to the next level of the hiring process. It's the same thing, I think. But the ultimate cause is most likely laziness. We use gestalt evaluation as a way to make quick judgments about whether a person understands our field. If they do--that means we don't have to read/evaluate that closely, and it's less effort for us. Like all behaviors that are reinforced, there is motivation to encourage from both sides. Everyone wins on the deal.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > Everyone wins on the deal. Except those who are new to the field, yet still have worthwhile contributions. They are shut out. Removing this bullshit signaling and standards is what we've been trying to do in academics for decades, to allow even children from lower class families to actively contribute without any disadvantage to their peers. Yet, now you're saying that this signaling is a "win-win situation"?
    - adpoe 10y ago
      In a sarcastic way, yes. Obviously it's a problem that self-propagates and creates new problems. But it works for the "people in power"; those who wield influence in the literary field.
VodkaHaze 10y ago
The problem is that postmodernism tends to make positive claims, but there's no empiricism to back it up. If you're going to say everything is up to interpretation, you're making a positive claim. That requires empirical proof, at least in the rigorous social sciences. Otherwise, your entire literature and peer review process is subject to the prior beliefs of the reviewers. That can, and has, led to an equilibrium state of ideological homogeneity in some subfields of sociology and philosophy (also some edge cases of cavalier empiricism passing review when it confirms priors in, say, social psychology). Once enough of a group thinks the same things, and ideas are not held up to some positive external standard, outside ideas don't get in anymore. The hate for postmodernism expresses the disdain for an ideological group trying to give credence to its ides without being subject to the same standard as other ideas in science, social or not.
- daturkel 10y ago
  What types of empirical evidence have been previously used to justify theories of philosophy or cultural criticism? Some fields don't admit themselves to the scientific method because what's being studied is inherently subjective. That being said, it's a common reductive meme that art or literature can be interpreted to mean "anything"—I've never taken a course in literature or art criticism that allowed for interpretations of a work not backed explicitly by the source material.
  - VodkaHaze 10y ago
    There's a difference between the positive (this thing is like that) and the normative (this should be like that). Positive questions are subject to empiricism, period. There is no cop out saying a positive statement is not testable. Even prohibitively difficult empirical questions (like in macroeconomics, psychology, biology, etc.) Are subject to testing. Normative questions can be discussed without empiricism, correct, but you can't use this to infer on how things are. So if you want to say there should be no objective reality,fine. If you say that factual statements are a tool of oppression because there is no objective reality, you stepped into the testable. Cultural criticism threads this line back and forth in a much too cavalier fashion. If you make a statement about how culture is, you've made a testable statement. There are plenty of ways to test cultural expectations, ask empirical psychologists and sociologists
panic 10y ago
Why not embrace this sort of computer-generated text as an object of study? As you point out, even human-generated postmodern literature can be interpreted in many different ways. Ultimately the interpretation lies in the person reading the text, not the author. Computerized authors just make this more obvious.
opaqe 10y ago
I don't necessarily sympathize with postmodern studies as much as you, but threads like this really don't contribute much to HN and should be more tiresome for people across the board. We should recognize it for the flame-war that it really is, just one that doesn't have a proper representative on one side, i.e. a "community bubble" symptom. If there's no technical discussion of the algorithm or an interesting bipartisan viewpoint to be had here, then all that's left is bashing that's been done before in past stories.
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
Who bullied the Social Text editors? How can I bully journal editors to accept my papers?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
adpoe 10y ago
I agree that the work of Lacan, Derrida, Baudrillard, and their contemporaries do deserve study and contemplation. I've done it, and I learned a ton from it. The problem that these generators address is much more circumscribed. Rather, it is poking fun at the people who do not understand these literary giants, but claim to. This kind of obscurantism is often used to hide the fact that the author doesn't fully understand what is going on. A hallmark of deep understanding in any field is the ability to simplify complex concepts and relay them to a reader efficiently. (I'm not a physicist, but Brian Greene can explain String Theory and particle physics in a way I understand. Why can't someone do the same with Lacan?) For example, Zizek is excellent at this. (As are many others.) If you read his papers, they do not sound like this. He uses the buzz-words necessary, but he makes straightforward arguments. And IMO, that's why he's been successful--he's helped get Hegel, Lacan, and other writers' complex philosophical ideas out to a very wide audience, efficiently--by writing good, quality prose. Compare that with much of what comes out of undergrad/grad student writing classes, and I submit that there is a huge difference. And that's what this is poking fun at. Just my 2c. At its deepest level, it is a question of inequality: some people are able to BS their way to tenure, fame, etc., by writing like this--because they understand the system better than others who weren't as well groomed through upbringing, good mentorship, or other circumstances. Writing this way is a strategy for certain people who know how the game is played: it has worked, and will continue to. But that's a problem, and it's one worthy of mockery.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  > Rather, it is poking fun at the people who do not understand these literary giants, but claim to. I'd go a level deeper, and say that these "literary giants" also suffer from "obscurantism". Maybe it's academia, or the fact they're trying to express a truly new thought (if that's possible nowadays), but comprehensibility suffers by using long and obscure words. They also say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", so to expect undergrads won't to also do this is unrealistic.
  - algesten 10y ago
    I have a close friend who is doing a postdoc in these areas. I've reviewed a lot of text and talked a lot about the concepts. The language may sometimes use long and obscure words, but it is for a reason, and it it precision. The thoughts and philosophical underpinnings are very nuanced and precise. Synonyms exist in most languages, and english has a lot of them, and their only motivation is to express nuances.
bambax 10y ago
I have read Derrida, Kristeva and Baudrillard, in French. Not all of their work, but enough to know it's a lot of bullshit. Derrida is extremely brilliant, but says nothing but banalities (sometimes funny ones, cf. "differance"). Baudrillard has interesting, poetic intuitions, that rest on nothing and take all of their value from their polemic content. Kristeva is not very intelligent, crazy at times, and guilty of the worst of the worst approximations and using mathematical concepts she doesn't understand, to explain / illustrate philosophical concepts she doesn't understand either. You assert, without proof or reference, that anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that Social Text's editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence; but even if it were true, what would it prove, besides the fact that said standards were weak in the first place? And why didn't said editors accept to publish explanations after the fact? Had they been even a little concerned with the truth (as all philosophers should be) they would have been very happy to deconstruct a hoax, them being the victims notwithstanding.
- bitwize 10y ago
  The way I understand Derrida's work is that it's long-form trolling. You can't deny objective truth, and even deny that there is a single common interpretation to someone's writing that everyone can agree on, and carry on in a conventional philosophical argument without assuming the opposite of what you claim. But what you can do is subvert other people's assumptions of how writing is to be interpreted, for the lulz.
UhUhUhUh 10y ago
The point is not that "postmodernity has no cultural or intellectual value". Indeed, even a generator as exemplified in the article can be said to have such value. Since the end of the XIXth century it has become clear, albeit conveniently ignored, that the value of interest is crucially practical. Hic rhodus, hic salta. When it's not, aside from bringing some short-lived distraction, as any other consumption, it validates and reinforces a status quo that, judging by the state of the world, is not conducive to common happiness or productivity. To say the least.
3chelon 10y ago
Irigary is the one who called E=mc^2 a sexist equation, right? No further questions, your honour.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Did she? https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2hu5sb/did_luce_irigaray_ever_actually_say_emc2_is_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2hu5sb/did_l...
briholt 10y ago
But anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that Social Text's editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence. Consider that there may be an intrinsic flaw in your field when the publication of factual claims relies entirely on social pressure. Consider that there is a flaw when claims cannot actually be "debunked," but rather merely receive counter social pressure. The work of many of late Twentieth Century philosophy by figures such as Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigary, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, and many many more deserve serious studied contemplation...They are not randomized strings of insider shibboleths. Listing authors in your field is literally a shibboleth. Occasionally propagating "postmodern" meme generators is a childish form of territorial demarcation Your defense of postmodernism is to attack opponents and a list insider authors. Consider that those are classic territorial tactics. From your defense, postmodernism seems akin medieval theologians debating the nature of the soul. There is a lot of internal self-promotion and politicking, and a lot of attacking outsiders, but nothing of actual use to the real world.
- foldr 10y ago
  Social Text was not a major journal, and in fact didn't even review submissions. What could or couldn't get published in it is of very little significance. There have been similar pranks where low-tier computer science conferences have accepted nonsense abstracts. Does that mean that all of computer science is bullshit?
  - briholt 10y ago
    I suspect Sokal-eque hoaxes could get published one-by-one in every single postmodern journal and each would be deemed "not a major journal" in rotation. Postmodernism is some kind of academic alternate reality that exists only in journals, so discrediting one is kind of a big deal. The difference is that computer science is grounded in the real world. Every CS conference could fold, every journal could be disgraced, and yet Google would still answer my search queries. Therefore, I'm pretty sure 01+01=10. This unarguable power of reality is why empiricism won.
    - 10y ago
ucaetano 10y ago
"Square root of minus one equals = erectile penis" "We do not understand fluid mechanics as well as rigid mechanics due to sexism, fluids are associated with women, and rigid with men" "e=mc^2 is a sexed equation, prioritizing the speed of light over other speeds which are very important in our lives" The first one is from Lacan, and other two from Irigay (they are not exact quotes, my apologies). As The Economist put it: "If you ask one of them a question, they draw out enigmatic little expressions from their quiver, so to speak, and shoot one off; and if you try to get hold of an account of what that one meant, you're transfixed by another novel set of metaphors. You'll never get anywhere with any of them."
rntz 10y ago
> But anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that _Social Text_'s editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence. This is misleading. First, Social Text at the time explicitly did not practice peer review. You can't relax standards that aren't there. Second, their editorial requests were, in their own words: "We requested him (a) to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and (b) to excise most of his footnotes." He refused, and they published anyway. Sokal was certainly playing at being a recalcitrant author, but if an author's recalcitrance causes you to publish an article full of gibberish, you have still published gibberish. The Sokal affair is not some knock-down destruction of the fields of postmodern and cultural criticism, but it's certainly a blemish. I encourage anyone who is interested to read http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html > Occasionally propagating "postmodern" meme generators is a childish form of territorial demarcation Or possibly it's just funny. Here's a similar one for discrete math: http://www.theproofistrivial.com/ http://www.theproofistrivial.com/
- 3131s 10y ago
  > Or possibly it's just funny. As the submitter, this is definitely what I was leaning towards. I didn't mean this as some knockdown of all postmodern thought (I like some pomo philosophers), but just poking fun at the obscurantism in the work of some subset of authors. And, that the generation of the text is at least mildly interesting from a computer science / linguistics perspective. Very surprised to wake up and see this with so much commentary / controversy.
everyone 10y ago
"they can be interpreted in many different ways." This is the clincher for me. How can you make a serious argument if what you say is open to interpretation? For every variable the possible meanings multiply exponentially. You may as well be saying anything, no-one will ever be able to test or refute it. In science a huge amount of effort is put into making things as clear as humanly possible, and still lots of problems in communication arise. Postmodern writings can certainly be enjoyed in the same way as dense literature, for the use of language, references, cryptic meaning, and so on. But demanding to be treated as a meaningful addition to the corpus of human knowledge is simply narcissism.
MichaelGG 10y ago
Wikipedia says Luce Irigary says E=mc² could be a "sexed equation" as it privileges c over other "necessary speeds". How is it possible to think she isn't full of nonsense?
bitwize 10y ago
Indeed. Start by reading the opuses of Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Levinas and then maybe you can begin to talk about postmodernism and not be laughed out of the parlor. Till then, stfu and start reading.
cwmma 10y ago
> They are not randomized strings of insider shibboleths. the joke is that from many people's perspective real papers are indistinguishable from this. > Their work is not easy to understand and, yes, they can be interpreted in many different ways. saying this about a paper would lead many in the harder science to question what the point of work that is able to be interpreted in multiple ways, does the paper even matter or is it just my interpretation that matters and if it's just my interpretation why should I even care about the paper to begin with, if something can mean anything doesn't it just mean nothing?
vixen99 10y ago
Serious comtemplation? You mean Kristeva, for instance, really, really did understand the mathematics she used. She was not really attempting to impress her readers with fancy words she evidently did not understand as Sokal clearly shows on page 46 of Intellectual Impostures. Dawkins put it well "Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following: " And he quotes the psychoanalyst (!!) Félix Guattari "We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously. "

danharaj 10y ago

Really the best "criticism" of postmodern thought is that once you've gone through and deconstructed everything and reduced the world to power relations, it doesn't give you much indication what you can do about it. Of course, that's not what most postmodern thinkers set out to do. Dismantling the present is necessary for imagining the future.

elliotec 10y ago

Gotta say, this comment itself reads like it was written by the postmodern generator

foldr 10y ago
No it doesn't. Come on, that's not a constructive response to a perfectly articulate comment.
- azeirah 10y ago
  To people who don't know anything about postmodernism (i.e. me), it certainly does.
  - foldr 10y ago
    The comment doesn't say anything about the content of postmodernist thought, so I can't see why you would say that. It's completely intelligible, and it's a bit childish to pretend otherwise.
k_lander 10y ago
i wasn't sure if it was sarcasm either
caseysoftware 10y ago
I thought it was copy/paste from the site.. until I realized he was serious. Poe's Law in action.
JonnieCache 10y ago
Really? I mean it uses some slightly unusual words (shibboleth, demarcation, unbecoming) but these are hardly technical terms, you'll find them in stories for children or teenagers. There are no complex or difficult sentences in there.

zwischenzug 10y ago

Humanities student-turned software engineer here. Was once into PoMo studies. I don't know about the Social Text bullying issue (I'd never heard of Social Text, so I didn't think its publication that significant), but Sokal's Intellectual Impostures picks apart most of those writers' abuse of scientific concepts extremely fairly and sensitively. He takes great care not to comment on their philosophical writing outside of its scientific content, and even then takes care to distinguish between literal and metaphorical use.

zwischenzug 10y ago
Also, I see little evidence of the 'bullying' mentioned here. Do you have any evidence to share? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair#Publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair#Publication
mistersquid 10y ago
I was mistaken about the peer review, as _Social Text_ was not peer-reviewed. The article I was remembering discusses how Sokal refused to make the edits requested by _Social Text_'s editors. [0] > Having established an interest in Sokal's article, we did > ask him informally to revise the piece. We requested him (a) > to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and > (b) to excise most of his footnotes. Sokal seemed resistant > to any revisions, and indeed insisted on retaining almost > all of his footnotes and bibliographic apparatus on the > grounds that his peers, in science, expected extensive > documentation of this sort. Judging from his response, it > was clear that his article would appear as is, or not at > all. At this point, Sokal was designated as a "difficult, > uncooperative author," a category well known to journal > editors. We judged his article too much trouble to publish, > not yet on the reject pile, perhaps of sufficient interest > to readers if published in the company of related articles. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html
- FabHK 10y ago
  It is understandable that Sokal was hesitant to remove the footnotes: they contain many of the best jokes and outrageous postmodern quotes (and also make it quite clear to any reader with a basic knowledge of the sciences that this was not meant seriously).

camdenlock 10y ago

Oh, wow. Found the grad student. Maybe this postmodernist word salad phenomenon is the result of humanities students and professors (mistakenly) thinking that their area of study contains no more legitimate things to investigate. Consequently, we're now seeing this mere intellect signaling being passed off as worthwhile content. Come on. You can do better.

adpoe 10y ago
Didn't go to grad school for this stuff, but I did study it in undergrad. I wrote dozens of papers like this, and they always got great marks. For me, the reason I did it was simple: if you want good grades/academic-approval in this field... writing like that works! I do think there is signaling going on--if your paper has the 'gestalt' of what a 'good paper' looks like, then you get an A. Because you 'get it'. Similar signaling happens in all fields though, including software. For instance, when you're looking at a coder's website/github/resume, there are certain things hiring committees look for before passing on to the next level of the hiring process. It's the same thing, I think. But the ultimate cause is most likely laziness. We use gestalt evaluation as a way to make quick judgments about whether a person understands our field. If they do--that means we don't have to read/evaluate that closely, and it's less effort for us. Like all behaviors that are reinforced, there is motivation to encourage from both sides. Everyone wins on the deal.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > Everyone wins on the deal. Except those who are new to the field, yet still have worthwhile contributions. They are shut out. Removing this bullshit signaling and standards is what we've been trying to do in academics for decades, to allow even children from lower class families to actively contribute without any disadvantage to their peers. Yet, now you're saying that this signaling is a "win-win situation"?
  - adpoe 10y ago
    In a sarcastic way, yes. Obviously it's a problem that self-propagates and creates new problems. But it works for the "people in power"; those who wield influence in the literary field.

VodkaHaze 10y ago

The problem is that postmodernism tends to make positive claims, but there's no empiricism to back it up. If you're going to say everything is up to interpretation, you're making a positive claim. That requires empirical proof, at least in the rigorous social sciences. Otherwise, your entire literature and peer review process is subject to the prior beliefs of the reviewers. That can, and has, led to an equilibrium state of ideological homogeneity in some subfields of sociology and philosophy (also some edge cases of cavalier empiricism passing review when it confirms priors in, say, social psychology). Once enough of a group thinks the same things, and ideas are not held up to some positive external standard, outside ideas don't get in anymore. The hate for postmodernism expresses the disdain for an ideological group trying to give credence to its ides without being subject to the same standard as other ideas in science, social or not.

daturkel 10y ago
What types of empirical evidence have been previously used to justify theories of philosophy or cultural criticism? Some fields don't admit themselves to the scientific method because what's being studied is inherently subjective. That being said, it's a common reductive meme that art or literature can be interpreted to mean "anything"—I've never taken a course in literature or art criticism that allowed for interpretations of a work not backed explicitly by the source material.
- VodkaHaze 10y ago
  There's a difference between the positive (this thing is like that) and the normative (this should be like that). Positive questions are subject to empiricism, period. There is no cop out saying a positive statement is not testable. Even prohibitively difficult empirical questions (like in macroeconomics, psychology, biology, etc.) Are subject to testing. Normative questions can be discussed without empiricism, correct, but you can't use this to infer on how things are. So if you want to say there should be no objective reality,fine. If you say that factual statements are a tool of oppression because there is no objective reality, you stepped into the testable. Cultural criticism threads this line back and forth in a much too cavalier fashion. If you make a statement about how culture is, you've made a testable statement. There are plenty of ways to test cultural expectations, ask empirical psychologists and sociologists

panic 10y ago

Why not embrace this sort of computer-generated text as an object of study? As you point out, even human-generated postmodern literature can be interpreted in many different ways. Ultimately the interpretation lies in the person reading the text, not the author. Computerized authors just make this more obvious.

opaqe 10y ago

I don't necessarily sympathize with postmodern studies as much as you, but threads like this really don't contribute much to HN and should be more tiresome for people across the board. We should recognize it for the flame-war that it really is, just one that doesn't have a proper representative on one side, i.e. a "community bubble" symptom. If there's no technical discussion of the algorithm or an interesting bipartisan viewpoint to be had here, then all that's left is bashing that's been done before in past stories.

KKKKkkkk1 10y ago

Who bullied the Social Text editors? How can I bully journal editors to accept my papers?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

adpoe 10y ago

I agree that the work of Lacan, Derrida, Baudrillard, and their contemporaries do deserve study and contemplation. I've done it, and I learned a ton from it. The problem that these generators address is much more circumscribed. Rather, it is poking fun at the people who do not understand these literary giants, but claim to. This kind of obscurantism is often used to hide the fact that the author doesn't fully understand what is going on. A hallmark of deep understanding in any field is the ability to simplify complex concepts and relay them to a reader efficiently. (I'm not a physicist, but Brian Greene can explain String Theory and particle physics in a way I understand. Why can't someone do the same with Lacan?) For example, Zizek is excellent at this. (As are many others.) If you read his papers, they do not sound like this. He uses the buzz-words necessary, but he makes straightforward arguments. And IMO, that's why he's been successful--he's helped get Hegel, Lacan, and other writers' complex philosophical ideas out to a very wide audience, efficiently--by writing good, quality prose. Compare that with much of what comes out of undergrad/grad student writing classes, and I submit that there is a huge difference. And that's what this is poking fun at. Just my 2c. At its deepest level, it is a question of inequality: some people are able to BS their way to tenure, fame, etc., by writing like this--because they understand the system better than others who weren't as well groomed through upbringing, good mentorship, or other circumstances. Writing this way is a strategy for certain people who know how the game is played: it has worked, and will continue to. But that's a problem, and it's one worthy of mockery.

guitarbill 10y ago
> Rather, it is poking fun at the people who do not understand these literary giants, but claim to. I'd go a level deeper, and say that these "literary giants" also suffer from "obscurantism". Maybe it's academia, or the fact they're trying to express a truly new thought (if that's possible nowadays), but comprehensibility suffers by using long and obscure words. They also say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", so to expect undergrads won't to also do this is unrealistic.
- algesten 10y ago
  I have a close friend who is doing a postdoc in these areas. I've reviewed a lot of text and talked a lot about the concepts. The language may sometimes use long and obscure words, but it is for a reason, and it it precision. The thoughts and philosophical underpinnings are very nuanced and precise. Synonyms exist in most languages, and english has a lot of them, and their only motivation is to express nuances.

bambax 10y ago

I have read Derrida, Kristeva and Baudrillard, in French. Not all of their work, but enough to know it's a lot of bullshit. Derrida is extremely brilliant, but says nothing but banalities (sometimes funny ones, cf. "differance"). Baudrillard has interesting, poetic intuitions, that rest on nothing and take all of their value from their polemic content. Kristeva is not very intelligent, crazy at times, and guilty of the worst of the worst approximations and using mathematical concepts she doesn't understand, to explain / illustrate philosophical concepts she doesn't understand either. You assert, without proof or reference, that anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that Social Text's editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence; but even if it were true, what would it prove, besides the fact that said standards were weak in the first place? And why didn't said editors accept to publish explanations after the fact? Had they been even a little concerned with the truth (as all philosophers should be) they would have been very happy to deconstruct a hoax, them being the victims notwithstanding.

bitwize 10y ago
The way I understand Derrida's work is that it's long-form trolling. You can't deny objective truth, and even deny that there is a single common interpretation to someone's writing that everyone can agree on, and carry on in a conventional philosophical argument without assuming the opposite of what you claim. But what you can do is subvert other people's assumptions of how writing is to be interpreted, for the lulz.

UhUhUhUh 10y ago

The point is not that "postmodernity has no cultural or intellectual value". Indeed, even a generator as exemplified in the article can be said to have such value. Since the end of the XIXth century it has become clear, albeit conveniently ignored, that the value of interest is crucially practical. Hic rhodus, hic salta. When it's not, aside from bringing some short-lived distraction, as any other consumption, it validates and reinforces a status quo that, judging by the state of the world, is not conducive to common happiness or productivity. To say the least.

3chelon 10y ago

Irigary is the one who called E=mc^2 a sexist equation, right? No further questions, your honour.

icebraining 10y ago
Did she? https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2hu5sb/did_luce_irigaray_ever_actually_say_emc2_is_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2hu5sb/did_l...

briholt 10y ago

But anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that Social Text's editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence. Consider that there may be an intrinsic flaw in your field when the publication of factual claims relies entirely on social pressure. Consider that there is a flaw when claims cannot actually be "debunked," but rather merely receive counter social pressure. The work of many of late Twentieth Century philosophy by figures such as Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigary, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, and many many more deserve serious studied contemplation...They are not randomized strings of insider shibboleths. Listing authors in your field is literally a shibboleth. Occasionally propagating "postmodern" meme generators is a childish form of territorial demarcation Your defense of postmodernism is to attack opponents and a list insider authors. Consider that those are classic territorial tactics. From your defense, postmodernism seems akin medieval theologians debating the nature of the soul. There is a lot of internal self-promotion and politicking, and a lot of attacking outsiders, but nothing of actual use to the real world.

foldr 10y ago
Social Text was not a major journal, and in fact didn't even review submissions. What could or couldn't get published in it is of very little significance. There have been similar pranks where low-tier computer science conferences have accepted nonsense abstracts. Does that mean that all of computer science is bullshit?
- briholt 10y ago
  I suspect Sokal-eque hoaxes could get published one-by-one in every single postmodern journal and each would be deemed "not a major journal" in rotation. Postmodernism is some kind of academic alternate reality that exists only in journals, so discrediting one is kind of a big deal. The difference is that computer science is grounded in the real world. Every CS conference could fold, every journal could be disgraced, and yet Google would still answer my search queries. Therefore, I'm pretty sure 01+01=10. This unarguable power of reality is why empiricism won.
  - 10y ago

ucaetano 10y ago

"Square root of minus one equals = erectile penis" "We do not understand fluid mechanics as well as rigid mechanics due to sexism, fluids are associated with women, and rigid with men" "e=mc^2 is a sexed equation, prioritizing the speed of light over other speeds which are very important in our lives" The first one is from Lacan, and other two from Irigay (they are not exact quotes, my apologies). As The Economist put it: "If you ask one of them a question, they draw out enigmatic little expressions from their quiver, so to speak, and shoot one off; and if you try to get hold of an account of what that one meant, you're transfixed by another novel set of metaphors. You'll never get anywhere with any of them."

rntz 10y ago

> But anyone who has studied the Sokal hoax knows very well that _Social Text_'s editors were bullied into relaxing their peer-reviewed standards at Sokal's insistence. This is misleading. First, Social Text at the time explicitly did not practice peer review. You can't relax standards that aren't there. Second, their editorial requests were, in their own words: "We requested him (a) to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and (b) to excise most of his footnotes." He refused, and they published anyway. Sokal was certainly playing at being a recalcitrant author, but if an author's recalcitrance causes you to publish an article full of gibberish, you have still published gibberish. The Sokal affair is not some knock-down destruction of the fields of postmodern and cultural criticism, but it's certainly a blemish. I encourage anyone who is interested to read http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html > Occasionally propagating "postmodern" meme generators is a childish form of territorial demarcation Or possibly it's just funny. Here's a similar one for discrete math: http://www.theproofistrivial.com/ http://www.theproofistrivial.com/

3131s 10y ago
> Or possibly it's just funny. As the submitter, this is definitely what I was leaning towards. I didn't mean this as some knockdown of all postmodern thought (I like some pomo philosophers), but just poking fun at the obscurantism in the work of some subset of authors. And, that the generation of the text is at least mildly interesting from a computer science / linguistics perspective. Very surprised to wake up and see this with so much commentary / controversy.

everyone 10y ago

"they can be interpreted in many different ways." This is the clincher for me. How can you make a serious argument if what you say is open to interpretation? For every variable the possible meanings multiply exponentially. You may as well be saying anything, no-one will ever be able to test or refute it. In science a huge amount of effort is put into making things as clear as humanly possible, and still lots of problems in communication arise. Postmodern writings can certainly be enjoyed in the same way as dense literature, for the use of language, references, cryptic meaning, and so on. But demanding to be treated as a meaningful addition to the corpus of human knowledge is simply narcissism.

MichaelGG 10y ago

Wikipedia says Luce Irigary says E=mc² could be a "sexed equation" as it privileges c over other "necessary speeds". How is it possible to think she isn't full of nonsense?

bitwize 10y ago

Indeed. Start by reading the opuses of Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Levinas and then maybe you can begin to talk about postmodernism and not be laughed out of the parlor. Till then, stfu and start reading.

cwmma 10y ago

> They are not randomized strings of insider shibboleths. the joke is that from many people's perspective real papers are indistinguishable from this. > Their work is not easy to understand and, yes, they can be interpreted in many different ways. saying this about a paper would lead many in the harder science to question what the point of work that is able to be interpreted in multiple ways, does the paper even matter or is it just my interpretation that matters and if it's just my interpretation why should I even care about the paper to begin with, if something can mean anything doesn't it just mean nothing?

vixen99 10y ago

Serious comtemplation? You mean Kristeva, for instance, really, really did understand the mathematics she used. She was not really attempting to impress her readers with fancy words she evidently did not understand as Sokal clearly shows on page 46 of Intellectual Impostures. Dawkins put it well "Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following: " And he quotes the psychoanalyst (!!) Félix Guattari "We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously. "