I spent part of the day, yesterday, reading blogs. I really don't do that, very often. I had discovered (or, more likely, re-discovered) a review of the "Sokal affair" in which a physics professor at NYU had "hoaxed" the pomo (postmodernist) publication "Social Text" by sending in an article full of jargony BS and the editors let it through. It was quite a scandal, as it allegedly proved just how vacuous pomo discourse really is – it was an "emperor has no clothes" moment.
I also discovered an interesting little website that randomly generates a pomo article each time you refresh the page. A lovely tool, but my first thought was – I bet some of the things that get said are really profound. It's kind of like an instantiation of Borges' infinite library, for a particular type of discourse. Another tool that has similar functionality is the Kant generator. Again, my reaction, more than – wow, random BS! – is, instead – I wonder if this can generate real meaning? Finally, there is a random generator of CSCI research papers made by some people at MIT. Infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, all that.
Regardless, a review of the Sokal affair caused me to question the pomo allegiances I tend to take for granted in myself. My affairs with Jameson, Deleuze, et al. Are they really that impenetrable? Or, contrariwise, am I really so deleuzional as to believe I "get" what they're trying to say?
Currently I'm struggling through a kind of phase where I question just about everything – about what I believe, about what I want to do, about what I like to do. Ad infinitum. So why no question what philosophical / lit. crit. authors I take seriously, too?
I have no answers, here. Nor even any profound, clearly-expressed doubts. But I think back to Jean-Jacques LeCercle's Philosophy of Nonsense: just because it's nonsense, doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything. There's value and, ironically, meaning to be found in nonsense. It's a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself. So if the pomos are writing nonsense, maybe they've got a reason for it.