The Age Of Post-Reason
A Facebook friend of mine writes:
Yes, this book review is 20 years old. But the arch, earnest, dishonest bullshit that the reviewer skewers brilliantly is still, unfortunately, all the rage in insipid "studies" departments on virtually every college campus. Psychologists bend over and tolerate this pseudo-intellectual crap at their peril...
And here's that not-to-be-missed review by Matt Cartmill, from Duke's Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, of Donna Haraway's Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (Routledge, New York, 1989):
It is thus not simply false to say that Mallarm6 is a Platonist or a Hegelian. But it is above all not true. And vice versa. Jacques Derrida (1981, p. 207)This is a book that contradicts itself a hundred times; but that is not a criticism of it, because its author thinks contradictions are a sign of in- tellectual ferment and vitality. This is a book that systematically distorts and selects historical evidence; but that is not a criticism, because its author thinks that all interpretations are biased, and she regards it as her duty to pick and choose her facts to favor her own brand of politics. This is a book full of vaporous, French-intellectual prose that makes Teilhard de Chardin sound like Ernest Hemingway by comparison; but that is not a criticism, because the author likes that sort of prose and has taken lessons in how to write it, and she thinks that plain, homely speech is part of a conspiracy to oppress the poor.
via William Tooke
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