Pomo Schlomo

This is a hilarious exchange on literary theory and postmodernism, through very jaded eyes (and appropriately so). I particularly like this assertion:

It was generally true that the young academics who opted for literary theory and its related forms of scientism had been on the Left and were looking for a comfortable bolt-hole where they could either cherish their principles or quietly give them up, but a bad conscience was not the problem. On the contrary, many of them thought they were Noam Chomsky: an illusion on their part which depended on the mistaken idea that his structural linguistics was a form of literary theory too. But linguistics depends on scientific method, which can go wrong, as it did even for Einstein. Literary theorists are always right, like Cagliostro.

Right on! And I agree with this, from another commentator:

My take on the American love for post-modernism is that, (1) it's still the easiest way for academics to pass off lazy scholarship as something profound, (2) it fills a spititual void for these self-loathing bourgeois, and (3) it's a perfect way for them to act out their petty resentments. In other words, for basically the same reasons academics used to be into Marxism.

No bloody kidding. The whole discussion, though, is worth reading, if you have the time.