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How is discourse a device? How does one reify subjugation? What on earth does it mean to flatter an epistemology. As someone who knows the meanings of all of t

How is discourse a device? How does one reify subjugation? What on earth does it mean to flatter an epistemology. As someone who knows the meanings of all of those words, I'm completely confused by the mixed metaphors. Meaningless twaddle is about right. Also, I believe the notion of cultural imperialism goes back to Marx, who was fairly clear about what he meant by it.

patio11 17y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with you that the language of the academy is esoteric (and it is sometimes used to obscure), on the other hand, you presumably think the phrase "implementing a multi-tier caching architecture backed solely by distributed in-memory red-black trees" means something. I'll guarantee you anybody with a PhD in cultural studies knows every word in that sentence and doesn't have a flipping clue what it actually means. Discourse is a device in that talking about something is an action, which is one of the fundamental (useful) insights of all the pomo stuff. For example, talking about what type of content is suitable for HN is not just neutral, it actually moves the perception of what is suitable for HN, and thus influences what HN is. Similarly, talking about cultural imperialism influences policymakers to avoid policies which would materially improve the lives of pick-your-favorite-poor-people. Reifying subjugation means that your discourse says that it is both the natural order of things, and morally praiseworthy, that pick-your-favorite-poor-people are trapped in a premodern nasty, brutish, and short existence. For example, their culture has medicine men instead of Western medicine. If you say "their traditional holistic understanding of the human body as being one with nature and the spirits of all living things" is more important than giving their sick children effective pills so that they'll live to the age of five, you're reifying subjugation. Part of the reason we talk in jargon in our field and in my ex-field is that everyone is on the same page and it makes things very efficient. If you had been in the field, you wouldn't have needed a multi-paragraph explanation of the sentence, you would have gone straight to pissed. :)

patio11 17y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with you that the language of the academy is esoteric (and it is sometimes used to obscure), on the other hand, you presumably think the phrase "implementing a multi-tier caching architecture backed solely by distributed in-memory red-black trees" means something. I'll guarantee you anybody with a PhD in cultural studies knows every word in that sentence and doesn't have a flipping clue what it actually means. Discourse is a device in that talking about something is an action, which is one of the fundamental (useful) insights of all the pomo stuff. For example, talking about what type of content is suitable for HN is not just neutral, it actually moves the perception of what is suitable for HN, and thus influences what HN is. Similarly, talking about cultural imperialism influences policymakers to avoid policies which would materially improve the lives of pick-your-favorite-poor-people. Reifying subjugation means that your discourse says that it is both the natural order of things, and morally praiseworthy, that pick-your-favorite-poor-people are trapped in a premodern nasty, brutish, and short existence. For example, their culture has medicine men instead of Western medicine. If you say "their traditional holistic understanding of the human body as being one with nature and the spirits of all living things" is more important than giving their sick children effective pills so that they'll live to the age of five, you're reifying subjugation. Part of the reason we talk in jargon in our field and in my ex-field is that everyone is on the same page and it makes things very efficient. If you had been in the field, you wouldn't have needed a multi-paragraph explanation of the sentence, you would have gone straight to pissed. :)