My big problems with the satire--- that the poster, Raj or not, pulled off quite well---is that one, while it is a gut-busting sendup of a (stereo) typical student lefty loudmouth, it is a pathetic travesty of the serious thought of the left wing of the academy. I know that the poster is aware of that, but other enemies of calling a "spade" anything but a "spade" seem to think otherwise. I wonder if he has actually read any of the stuff seriously. Now, I'm hardly a Marxist or Leninist (though I do find it amusing that this thoroughly discredited pair's take on capitalism as warlike and expansionist by nature seems to have more insight into some of the facts of post-Cold War America than many of the more acceptible---'politically correct'?-- academics that we are supposed to respect.) But unlike some of the (really nice) guys from UF, I find that many of the issues that cultural critics like guys like Fanon, or Foucault ( or Edward Said, or Samuel R. Delany...) cackle about in concatenated prose are actually quite important. At least to me. So the work put into reading something like "Dhalgren" or "Orientalism" is justified. Yeah these annoying Postmodern critics claim that their serious ideas are hard to articulate in Joe Six-Pack's tongue. That might be BS, but Hegel, Spinoza, and many other canonically accepted thinkers that nobody ridicules can also be rough sledding for me. Their stuff seems also to contain some valuable insights scattered among many many prolix and/or preposterous formulations. And are they really harder to understand than more politically conservative guys like Kant and Kierkegaard? Or the typical UF-educated lawyer?
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