A momentarily withdraw to a post-existance that is in paradox to our accepted pre-condition

…and now for something completely different.

Those who have met me and discussed with me the complexities of the human condition would understand that i am very anti-intellectual. By that i actually mean the communication between an intellectual and an-other.

Was it Orwell who said that a middle-class socialist will never connect with the working classes because they are so caught up with ideology and they communicate that ideology in a way that no one would understand?? Hence why socialism would not appeal to the masses in 1930s Britian.

This is what i mean when i say i am anti-intellectual – i’m more for speaking clearly and coherently so that anyone would understand. This view is especially prevalent when discussing politics because to get into power you need popular support (well…). There is no way a population of a country would talk with the same conviction of an ideology and then communicate it in a way that not even the narrator understands, as do many who study political theory!

Anyway, i came across a website that republished an article by Stephen Katz called ‘How to Speak and Write Postmodern’. Read,  learn and enjoy:

by Stephen Katz, Associate Professor, Sociology

Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Postmodernism has been the buzzword in academia for the last

decade. Books, journal articles, conference themes and university

courses have resounded to the debates about postmodernism that focus

on the uniqueness of our times, where computerization, the global

economy and the media have irrevocably transformed all forms of

social engagement. As a professor of sociology who teaches about

culture, I include myself in this environment. Indeed, I have a

great interest in postmodernism both as an intellectual movement and

as a practical problem. In my experience there seems to be a gulf

between those who see the postmodern turn as a neo-conservative

reupholstering of the same old corporate trappings, and those who

see it as a long overdue break with modernist doctrines in

education, aesthetics and politics. Of course there are all kinds

of positions in between, depending upon how one sorts out the

optimum route into the next millennium.
However, I think the real gulf is not so much positional as

linguistic. Posture can be as important as politics when it comes to

the intelligentsia. In other words, it may be less important whether

or not you like postmodernism than whether or not you can speak and

write postmodernism. Perhaps you would like to join in conversation

with your local mandarins of cultural theory and all-purpose deep

thinking, but you don’t know what to say. Or, when you do

contribute something you consider relevant, even insightful, you get

ignored or looked at with pity. Here is a quick guide, then, to

speaking and writing postmodern.
First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out

of the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious.

Postmodern language requires that one uses play, parody and

indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this

is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a

well-acknowledged substitute. For example, let’s imagine you want

to say something like, “We should listen to the views of people

outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural

biases that affect us”. This is honest but dull. Take the word

“views”. Postmodernspeak would change that to “voices”, or better,

“vocalities”, or even better, “multivocalities”. Add an adjective

like “intertextual”, and you’re covered. “People outside” is also

too plain. How about “postcolonial others”? To speak postmodern

properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar

racism, sexism, ageism, etc. For example, phallogocentricism

(male-centredness combined with rationalistic forms of binary logic).
Finally “affect us” sounds

like plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like

“mediate our identities”. So, the final statement should say, “We

should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial

others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the

phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities”. Now you’re

talking postmodern!
Sometimes you might be in a hurry and won’t have the time to muster

even the minimum number of postmodern synonyms and neologisms needed

to avoid public disgrace. Remember, saying the wrong thing is

acceptable if you say it the right way. This brings me to a second

important strategy in speaking postmodern, which is to use as many

suffixes, prefixes, hyphens, slashes, underlinings and anything else

your computer (an absolute must to write postmodern) can dish out.

You can make a quick reference chart to avoid time delays. Make

three columns. In column A put your prefixes; post-, hyper-, pre-,

de-, dis-, re-, ex-, and counter-. In column B go your suffixes and

related endings; -ism, -itis, -iality, -ation, -itivity, and

-tricity. In column C add a series of well-respected names that

make for impressive adjectives or schools of thought, for example,

Barthes (Barthesian), Foucault (Foucauldian, Foucauldianism),

Derrida (Derridean, Derrideanism).
Now for the test. You want to say or write something like,

“Contemporary buildings are alienating”. This is a good thought,

but, of course, a non-starter. You wouldn’t even get offered a

second round of crackers and cheese at a conference reception with

such a line. In fact, after saying this, you might get asked to

stay and clean up the crackers and cheese after the reception. Go

to your three columns. First, the prefix. Pre- is useful, as is

post-, or several prefixes at once is terrific. Rather than

“contemporary building””, be creative. “The Pre/post/spatialities

of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity” is promising. You

would have to drop the weak and dated term “alienating” with some

well suffixed words from column B. How about “antisociality”, or be

more postmodern and introduce ambiguity with the linked phrase,

“antisociality/seductivity”.
Now, go to column C and grab a few names whose work everyone will

agree is important and hardly anyone has had the time or the

inclination to read. Continental European theorists are best when in

doubt. I recommend the sociologist Jean Baudrillard since he has

written a great deal of difficult material about postmodern space.

Don’t forget to make some mention of gender. Finally, add a few

smoothing out words to tie the whole garbled mess together and don’t

forget to pack in the hyphens, slashes and parentheses. What do you

get? “Pre/post/spacialities of counter-architectural

hyper-contemporaneity (re)commits us to an ambivalent

recurrentiality of antisociality/seductivity, one enunciated in a

de/gendered-Baudrillardian discourse of granulated subjectivity”.

You should be able to hear a postindustrial pin drop on the

retrocultural floor.
At some point someone may actually ask you what you’re talking

about. This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and

must be carefully avoided. You must always give the questioner the

impression that they have missed the point, and so send another

verbose salvo of postmodernspeak in their direction as a

“simplification” or “clarification” of your original statement. If

that doesn’t work, you might be left with the terribly modernist

thought of, “I don’t know”. Don’t worry, just say, “The instability

of your question leaves me with several contradictorily layered

responses whose interconnectivity cannot express the logocentric

coherency you seek. I can only say that reality is more uneven and

its (mis)representations more untrustworthy than we have time here

to explore”. Any more questions? No, then pass the cheese and

crackers.
{Posted to news:alt.humor.best-of-usenet by Andrew C Bulhak on 20

June 1995, found in news:alt.postmodern. – It is also reprinted in “The

Truth About the Truth” (Putnam, $13.95, 1995)}