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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
by 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 agoThe 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.