# How to support academia and view much academic work as nonsense **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 30, 2013, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766 "2013-01-30T01:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2013, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/41 "2013-02-03T04:27:06Z")
> [@](#): > > In the humanities, which is what this thread is really about, there typically are not assistantships available. I don’t mean to nitpick an otherwise excellent post, but there certainly ARE assistantships available in the humanities; who do you think teaches all those sections of freshman comp? (In fact, the standard advice for prospective grad students in the humanities is that you should _never_ pay your own way; the job prospects are too uncertain, and if you’re a genuinely strong candidate and not a marginal one, they will pay you.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/42 "2013-02-03T05:04:46Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Furthermore, I suspect that the reason that these theories bother you is that they challenge your political beliefs, not that they are nonsense. Does deconstructionism actually challenge any political beliefs? Serious question. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2013, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/43 "2013-02-03T05:21:15Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > I know my reply was long and boring but it was just as much about life after graduate school as well. I don’t doubt it. I mean, I was just reacting I guess to what you said about farm workers and soup kitchens. I don’t doubt that the market is tight for post-docs, or that life as an itinerant instructor sucks. It’s one good reason not to do it, I think. > [@](#): > > Well see now? I know one of those is a loaded statistic. “Full-time faculty” is not anything like the group described by the term “academic”. Go to any smaller schools’ website, any department and compare the number of full-time faculty to adjunct faculty. Half or more of the teachers at almost any of these schools, almost any department, are part-timers. > > Anyways, the essence of the post you originally replied to was that for their level of education, for what they contribute in service to human knowledge, But what do they contribute to human knowledge? That’s sort of the whole issue, isn’t it? That’s the point of the discussion. If what they’re doing is publishing, for the sake of being published, and what they’re saying isn’t affecting the broader community, how much value is there in what they’re doing? To be clear, I’m not saying academics don’t contribute anything. What I’m saying is that they seem to have invented for themselves a system that actively discourages what they should be trying to achieve. > [@](#): > > their compensation is nothing to celebrate. To have such a strong, overly-generalized, opinion on the quality of academic output by harping on the tiny percentage of published works that are fairly silly or just too dense with jargon to easily understand, such as displayed by **ITR champion** , is bizarre to me. But is it a tiny percentage? Or is that exactly what characterizes academic writing as academic writing - that it’s stilted, pointlessly complicated, obscure and jargony? In other words, as if it was written by somebody mostly concerned about getting accepted by an academic journal, rather than in communicating an idea. > [@](#): > > This is especially the case considering that it takes a relatively tiny investment to get decent to excellent academics to produce incremental to astonishing works expanding the range of human knowledge. It’s unreal to me that given the cost-benefit ratio of the entire range of people called an ‘academic’ that somebody would want to stereotype the lot while focusing on the tiniest proportion. > Academics go along with it because it’s their responsibility to share the results of their work and have it criticized by their community. Many journals provide their articles for free, and many academics share their manuscripts for free. I’m not going to say, “do you have a cite for that?” because that’s obnoxious. But I will say “that’s not what I’ve heard” because what I’ve heard is that not only do journals publish without remuneration to the authors, they take the copyright for the work as well, so that the original author is actually legally prohibited from publishing it anywhere else, without the journal’s permission. According to [this](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/23/is-the-academic-publishing-industry-on-the-verge-of-disruption), academic journals can cost as much as $40k per subscription, per year. I’m sure there are free ones, too. I’m guessing they’re the least prestigious ones - right? > [@](#): > > This behavior advances their career, sure, but it does so in the same way that properly handling any aspect of one’s chosen profession tends to advance your career. _You can be 100% certain that academics would share their work by some means or another without their career riding on it. They want their work to be analyzed and critiqued by their peers._ > > I think you are letting your cynicism get ahead of itself. Academics as a whole are performing a service at a relatively low rate of pay. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2013, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/44 "2013-02-03T06:22:11Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > I’m not going to say, “do you have a cite for that?” because that’s obnoxious. But I will say “that’s not what I’ve heard” because what I’ve heard is that not only do journals publish without remuneration to the authors, they take the copyright for the work as well, so that the original author is actually legally prohibited from publishing it anywhere else, without the journal’s permission. What you have heard is true for some journals, but not all of them. > [@](#): > > According to [this](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/23/is-the-academic-publishing-industry-on-the-verge-of-disruption), academic journals can cost as much as $40k per subscription, per year. That’s the price for libraries, and most journals do not cost anywhere near that much even for institutional subscriptions. They’re still very expensive compared to, say, a subscription to _Rolling Stone_, and frankly I think university libraries are really getting screwed by a lot of journal publishers, but $40,000 a year is not a typical price for a single journal. Individual journal subscriptions are also much, much cheaper than institutional subscriptions. Journals published by professional organizations are often available at a low cost – or no cost – to members. And as I said, people can read journals for free at a library. That’s why we spend so much money on them, so people can read them. > [@](#): > > I’m sure there are free ones, too. I’m guessing they’re the least prestigious ones - right? No. The PLOS (Public Library of Science) journals, for example, are pretty highly regarded, and they’re all open access. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/45 "2013-02-04T00:22:29Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > But what do they contribute to human knowledge? That’s sort of the whole issue, isn’t it? That’s the point of the discussion. If what they’re doing is publishing, for the sake of being published, and what they’re saying isn’t affecting the broader community, how much value is there in what they’re doing? Journals filter submissions, so people can’t publish just any junk they come up with. And in most fields people know the good journals from the bad (in terms of selectivity) so publishing in a journal that accepts 95% of submissions doesn’t do you much good. > [@](#): > > But is it a tiny percentage? Or is that exactly what characterizes academic writing as academic writing - that it’s stilted, pointlessly complicated, obscure and jargony? In other words, as if it was written by somebody mostly concerned about getting accepted by an academic journal, rather than in communicating an idea. Any field uses jargon. I’m involved in engineering stuff, which most people would agree is useful, and papers are full of specialized terms and are quite impenetrable to they layman. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/46 "2013-02-04T04:25:22Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Does deconstructionism actually challenge any political beliefs? Serious question. Well, by its very nature it challenges whatever the current dominant paradigm (I have the urge to insert some parenthetical statement disavowing the use of that phrase) is at the time, since that’s the first thing you deconstruct. The current dominant paradigm hates to be questioned, much less analyzed. So, it seems to be inherently against some forms of conservatism, ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/47 "2013-02-04T04:29:48Z")
> [@bhamfree](#): > > Post-Modern (postmodern) art is a reaction against Modern art. There are few things as goofy and pretentious as Modern art. Sorry, I can’t even begin to resist: Except maybe Postmodern art. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/48 "2013-02-04T05:32:50Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > But is it a tiny percentage? Or is that exactly what characterizes academic writing as academic writing - that it’s stilted, pointlessly complicated, obscure and jargony? What characterizes academic research writing is that it is technically specialized, because it’s written for fellow researchers who are also technical specialists. Technically specialized research articles may well look obscure and jargony and complicated to the non-specialist reader, but that’s not necessarily their authors’ fault. There are plenty of other types of writing produced by academics that are much more broadly accessible to a non-specialist audience, such as textbooks, popular journalism articles, collections of essays for general readers, scripts for documentaries, and so forth. Complaining that technically specialized research articles in a discipline you’re unfamiliar with are “obscure” and “jargony” is a bit like somebody who doesn’t read Chinese complaining that Chinese writing is just piles of meaningless strokes. Is there some amount of genuinely bad and incomprehensible academic writing out there in research journals? Sure. Is the typical vaguely-whiny “academic writing is bullshit” kvetcher capable of telling the difference between genuinely bad and incomprehensible academic writing and academic writing that is merely too technical for the average non-specialist reader to understand? No. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/49 "2013-02-04T05:49:27Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Institutions must manage their perceptions and clean up things that are producing serious negative publicitiy. Hurling insults at anyone with a negative perception won’t accomplish anything. Pointing out that certain negative perceptions are rooted in laziness and ignorance is not the same thing as “hurling insults”. Don’t take it personally, though: everybody is liable to inadvertently absorb some inaccurate perceptions rooted in laziness and ignorance. That’s why we have these boards, after all. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/50 "2013-02-04T06:29:28Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > But what do they contribute to human knowledge? That’s sort of the whole issue, isn’t it? That’s the point of the discussion. If what they’re doing is publishing, for the sake of being published, and what they’re saying isn’t affecting the broader community, how much value is there in what they’re doing? > > To be clear, I’m not saying academics don’t contribute anything. What I’m saying is that they seem to have invented for themselves a system that actively discourages what they should be trying to achieve. That is just a very superficial view of what Journals are, specially the science ones. > **[Understanding Scientific Journals and Articles | Process of Science |...](https://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Process-of-Science/49/Understanding-Scientific-Journals-and-Articles/158)** > > Learn about the structure and content of scientific research articles. Includes a brief history on scientific writing and explains how journals differ from other forms of media. > [@](#): > > Scientists publish their original research in scientific journals, which are fundamentally different from news magazines. The articles in scientific journals are not written by journalists – they are written by scientists. Scientific articles are not sensational stories intended to entertain the reader with an amazing discovery, nor are they news stories intended to summarize recent scientific events, nor even records of every successful and unsuccessful research venture. Instead, scientists write articles to describe their findings to the community in a transparent manner. Within a scientific article, scientists present their research questions, the methods by which the question was approached, and the results they achieved using those methods. In addition, they present their analysis of the data and describe some of the interpretations and implications of their work. Because these articles report new work for the first time, they are called primary literature. In contrast, articles or news stories that review or report on scientific research already published elsewhere are referred to as secondary. > > The articles in scientific journals are different from news articles in another way – they must undergo a process called peer review in which other scientists (the professional peers of the authors) evaluate the quality and merit of research before recommending whether or not it should be published (see our Scientific Writing II: Peer Review module). This is a much lengthier and more rigorous process than the editing and fact-checking that goes on at news organizations. The reason for this thorough evaluation by peers is that a scientific article is more than a snapshot of what is going on at a certain time in a scientist’s research. Instead, it is a part of what is collectively called the scientific literature, a global archive of scientific knowledge. When published, each article expands the library of scientific literature available to all scientists and contributes to the overall knowledge base of the discipline of science. Of course nothing is perfect, as science writer Peter Hadfield can tell you, but science does not stop with the publication of a bad paper, the process continues with others looking at the work and data and confirming the research or it is dismissed when the errors that do crop later are found. Many times science has to progress around powerful groups that are trying to stop that progress. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/uXesBhYwdRo/hqdefault.jpg "7. Climate Change - "Those" e-mails and science censorship") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXesBhYwdRo) ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/51 "2013-02-04T17:44:59Z")
> [@miller](#): > > i can think of very few endeavors that are reliably, or even mostly, successful. Most products brought to market fail to turn a profit. Most small business don’t last. Most books are boring. Most tv sucks. Most batters strike out. Most prayers don’t get answered. Most research yields nothing. And, yes, most academic writing is crap. > > It’s the rest of it that makes it worthwhile. qft +1 ---
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/52 "2013-02-04T18:07:44Z")
There’s still a difference between fields where the jargon is a necessary part of specificity and specialization that still corresponds to some actual meaning, and pomo/criticial theory writing that believes in obscurantism as a virtue in itself and makes up meaningless words to hide the fact that the whole field is a scam. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/53 "2013-02-04T18:49:31Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > I don’t mean to nitpick … Thanks for the information! You weren’t nitpicking, you were improving. > [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > There’s still a difference between fields where the jargon is a necessary part of specificity and specialization that still corresponds to some actual meaning, and pomo/criticial theory writing that believes in obscurantism as a virtue in itself and makes up > meaningless words to hide the fact that the whole field is a scam. Could you provide evidence for this assertion? My experience is that every field has its jargon, that it’s for specificity in communication (as you noted), and that the humanities have their terms as well. What term is commonly used by specialists in “pomo/critical theory” that you are certain is just for the sake of obscurantism? ---
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/54 "2013-02-04T19:24:35Z")
“If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.” ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/55 "2013-02-04T19:30:33Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > “If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.” Yes, it is possible to come up with run on sentences, even if they have big words in them. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/56 "2013-02-04T21:03:04Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > “If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.” While this is definitely an obscure and badly written sentence, you can’t really plausibly argue that its author, the Harvard cultural studies theorist Homi K. Bhabha, is just insincerely making shit up to fool people. Here’s another excerpt from the very same author, in his well-known essay “Culture’s In-Between”: > [@Homi K. Bhabha](#): > > What is at issue today is not the essentialized or idealized Arnoldian notion of ‘culture’ as an architectonic assemblage of the Hebraic and the Hellenic. In the midst of the multicultural wars we are surprisingly closer to an insight from T. S. Eliot’s _Notes towards the Definition of Culture_, where Eliot demonstrates a certain incommensurability, a necessary impossibility, in _thinking_ culture. Faced with the fatal notion of a self-contained European culture and the absurd notion of an uncontaminated culture in a single country, he writes, ‘We are therefore pressed to maintain the ideal of a world culture, while admitting it is something we cannot _imagine_. We can only conceive it as the logical term of the relations between cultures.’ The fatality of thinking of ‘local’ cultures as uncontaminated or self-contained forces us to conceive of ‘global’ cultures, which itself remains unimaginable. You may not agree with what Bhabha says or with the importance of his chosen subjects, and you may not like his writing style, but it’s silly to pretend that he never really means anything at all or has any genuine ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/57 "2013-02-04T21:46:03Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > “If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.” As others noted, it’s not that great of a sentence. Which of those terms are regularly used for the sake of obscuratism? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/58 "2013-02-05T00:24:52Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > . . . and pomo/criticial theory writing that believes in obscurantism as a virtue in itself and makes up meaningless words to hide the fact that the whole field is a scam. And you know that how? ---
**Author:** ![Condescending\_Robot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a183cd/32.png) [@Condescending\_Robot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Condescending_Robot)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/59 "2013-02-05T02:03:16Z")
Reading this would help: [Nussbaum, "The Professor of Parody"](http://perso.uclouvain.be/mylene.botbol/Recherche/GenreBioethique/Nussbaum_NRO.htm) The quote I gave is echoed thousands of times over in the works of the Derrida-influenced circle. They have nothing to say and just repeat platitudes run through a thesaurus. “Discourse of splitting” is not a term of art at all. It doesn’t appear anywhere except in the book that quote is from and people quoting it. It doesn’t mean anything at all, it’s just words smashed together. “Enunciatory modality” is a pointless way to say “way of writing.” Jargon used because common English has no word for the concept that “contrapposto” or “deoxyribonucleic” refers to is good, jargon used because an entire academic discipline is full of people who think like precocious 13-year-olds that want to sound smarter by using superfluous big words is bad. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766/60 "2013-02-05T02:38:15Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > Reading this would help: [Nussbaum, "The Professor of Parody"](http://perso.uclouvain.be/mylene.botbol/Recherche/GenreBioethique/Nussbaum_NRO.htm) Your link consists of one article primarily about one feminist philosopher (namely Yale professor Judith Butler) whose work the author (philosopher Martha Nussbaum at U Chicago) is criticizing. I admire Nussbaum’s work and know nothing about Butler, but I think Nussbaum herself would be the first to admit that this article does not count as any kind of quantitative analysis of academic trends overall. (It also has nothing to do with the cite from Bhabha that you flung out as your previous random snippet of ill-informed tsk-tskery.) Once again, just to broaden the perspective, let’s take a look at a different excerpt from the writings of the same author (in this case, Butler) whom you are deploring on the basis of one or two second-hand sound bites. Here’s a bit from Butler’s essay “Doubting Love” where she discusses Freud’s ideas on the relation between love and self-knowledge: > [@Judith Butler](#): > > [Freud] is the one who writes, ‘A man who doubts his own love may, or rather, must doubt every lesser thing.’ And this is the line I return to in my life, a line that cannot be read once, at least not by me. Freud is making a statement, but he is, implicitly, delivering as well a warning and an admonition. […] > > We might think Freud is saying that to doubt one’s own love is to doubt it in a very fundamental way, to call the most important matters into questions, and to not let assumptions go unquestioned. It is, in a way, to become philosophical in and about one’s passions. And this does not mean that one ceases to live them or that one kills them by thinking them into the ground. on the contrary, one lives them, and seeks to know them, but only by bringing one’s questions into the practice of love itself. > [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > The quote I gave is echoed thousands of times over in the works of the Derrida-influenced circle. They have nothing to say and just repeat platitudes run through a thesaurus. […] an entire academic discipline is full of people who think like precocious 13-year-olds that want to sound smarter by using superfluous big words […] Again, you’re tossing around unsupported quantitative claims and hyperbolic estimates basically pulled out of your ass. This sort of Chicken Little response to a few cherry-picked examples of pretentious and bad academic writing does not constitute a valid argument about the state of academia in general, or even of “an entire academic discipline”. Oh, and speaking of opaque-sounding jargon perpetrated by continental philosophers, try this on your pianola: > [@](#): > > Concepts of understanding are also thought a-priori antecedently to experience and for the sake of experience, but they contain nothing more than the unity of reflection upon appearances, in so far as these appearances must necessarily belong to a possible empirical consciousness. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-support-academia-and-view-much-academic-work-as-nonsense/648766.md?page=4)