keep your / hand on the rail / if / all / else fails

<< Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005 - 4:22 pm >>
ego tripping for the professors

ugh. why is post-modernism/cultural studies/philosophy so unwelcome by some? i don't get it. does post-modernism threaten their stupid little complacent egos? their extremist-rightist sense of tradition? do some people feel so small and insecure that their subjectivity is challenged by a body of intellectual work?

do i sound peeved? guilty as charged. i just came across an appalling article by a physicist simply bragging about how his paper (a non-sensical parody in fact) was accepted and published in a c.s.-related journal based in the states. he admits the journal is "marginal" and that the editors were sloppy, blah blah. and yet the main body of his article condemns and attacks the theorists whose quotes he uses completely out of context. with the justification that the quotes are actually more ridiculous in context than out of it. oh how justifying.

anyhow, it's sad that post-modernism / cultural theory seemingly make these self-proclaimed "old leftist" intellectuals uneasy and uncomfortable. (i don't know why he said he was a leftist, because he has the unmistakable aura of the rightist.) not all of the so-called scholars are too bright, apparently. (or perhaps they're too bright and can't see far ahead of their own vision?)