Thursday, July 8, 2010

Bursting Academic Bubbles Can Be Fun

It seems that various academic disciplines like to poke fun at each other. Not just for the occasional laugh but also to illustrate when an emperor is wearing transparent new clothes. At some point the fun can turn into rather pointed and harsh criticism. An easy target for this in general is postmodernism and postmodernist literary criticism in particular.

Richard Dawkins' review of Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bircmont is a wonderful summary of some of the most pointed criticisms that have been raised.

Chip Morningstar's How to Deconstruct Anything - My Postmodern Adventure is a slightly more lighthearted and informative look at the world of literary criticism from the outside.

Either way these articles both (*ahem* I wonder if I can say this with a straight face) help redefine the dominant paradigm with respect to the nature of the cognitive structures put in place by the inherent phenomenological nature of subjects being studied.

Or something to that effect...

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