In your article you write, >But dressed up in sufficiently confusing language—see the Butler passage from earlier in this essay—no one can tell what if anythin

In your article you write, >But dressed up in sufficiently confusing language—see the Butler passage from earlier in this essay—no one can tell what if anything is really being argued. As someone who has a cursory interest in critical theory, the passage was perfectly readable to me, especially if you're familiar with what the structuralists such as Althusser were arguing in the first place. The idea that it's only some ideological force that keeps deconstruction in play is false, since Althusser himself was sympathetic to the political goals of many deconstructioists - he was literally a Marxist and is heavily cited in critical theory even today. For that matter, one of Althusser's closest partners, Etienne Balibar, very frequently takes on issues of capital, race and gender from a structuralist perspective in new books he writes every year. Could the passage have been expressed in clearer terms? Maybe. But it's a mistake to charge it as not being able to tell what Butler is arguing. As an aside, this same criticism is leveled against Hegel, but the most progressive thing you'll find in Hegel is his takedown of phrenology. Confusing language is not at all limited by ideology. On the other hand, there are very clear writers such as Marcuse and Althusser who form the bedrock of critical theory today. As Adorno wrote in response to a criticism of his literary style: >"Now, from what you write about my language, to be honest, I find it very difficult to imagine that you mean it seriously. Your argumentation shows a true obsession with the thought of the reader. With my stuff you obviously didn't even come up with the idea that I'm not interested in him, neither in catching him, nor in snubbing him, but only in the most adequate and rigorous presentation of the matter possible. That is probably the only linguistic thing that can be done seriously against the cultural industry." You say confusion, Adorno says rigor. I have a hard time seeing why I couldn't have substituted your Butler passage for a passage from a paper in recent abstract mathematics or type theory.