You will read this now - that's an order!

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from  a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural tonalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."

Got that?

No, I will not be asking you questions to test your knowledge because, frankly, I can't understand a bloody word of it!

That passage, according to Wiki: "was awarded first prize in its fourth annual "Bad Writing Competition", which set out to "celebrate bad writing from the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles."

It was written by Ms. Judith Butler, a well known leader in the micro-puddle of feminist/lesbian studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

No, not exactly my idea of a hot, Californian 'chick', either, but then she has absolutely no desire to be one.  However, what I can say with some conviction is that she is as "thick as six short Ghurkhas".*  Anyone who can with malice afore-thought deliberately write such incomprehensible garbage is in dire need of, er, 're-education'.

*NB: Gurkhas are anything but 'thick' in the sense of lacking intelligence but being frequently nearly as wide as they are tall it has led some, er, 'poet' to invent that witty phrase.

 

Comments

[Backofanenvelope]

Well, I now know what Althusserian is. I shall go downstairs and make a couple of G&Ts to celebrate.

[Whitewall]

'She' will be feted among university elites as a deep thinker.

About those Gurkhas...I would not want to call one of them "thick" unless it was from a very safe distance. And a high wall.

[Whyaxye]

I used to live in Blandford Forum, where there were often fights in pubs and in the street between squaddies from Blandford Camp and local farm boys. I remember going into a pub once where a spectacular brawl had kicked off; tables over, glasses flying, and the floor awash with beer and blood.

In one serene corner were two very broad and muscular Gurkhas, quietly drinking. It was as if there was an invisible force-field around them.

[Bob]

That kind of baroque nonsense is the mark of the true pseudo intellectual. She's probably not worried about being hot with anyone other than herself.

[Andra]

You've got to admit there's some terrific words in there. If only I knew what they mean. Nah, on second thought, who cares?

[missred]

Translation: Capitalists good, Marxists bad.
I really have no idea either.

[Glesga]

Whitewall, I may have said this in the past but worth repeating. My brother now deceased served in Malaya 1951-1953 and the Gurkhas trained his battalion before being being deployed in the jungle. My brother survived.