I don't agree that it's simply a difference in terminology. It also adds to the complexity but that's not quite it. No one looks at BJJ guys talking about omoplatas and Brabos and thinks "Oh that Academic speak!" If one were to hang around long enough in a conversation between two jits players or even attend some seminar and had no previous experience, the chances that they actually understood a good portion of the material isn't outside the realm of possibilities. I understand what your saying i just think you are being overly charitable in saying it's a specific language catered to an audience when what you really mean is they use their own terminology while using needlessly complex syntax. Im criticizing the Syntax used not the terminology.
Once more i have a problem with the syntax used. The sentence you provided isn't really all that difficult to digest, no doubt i don't understand what the hell you are getting at but it's no different than listening to a plumber talk about my basement flooding and the necessary steps to follow in order to alleviate the issue, either way it's not really academics using a particular language to shorten their word count but rather when they do the opposite and needlessly drag things on when in reality that "the mise-en-scène was Bazinian in spirit" would have been much appreciated.
Yea im not a hater when it comes to big vocabularies either but that's not the issue here. I have been reading philisophical texts since i was 16 and i can appreciate linguistic artistry but i would never confuse whats below or compare it to other forms of linguistic artistry.
"The work of the text is to literalize the signifiers of the first encounter, dismantling the ideal as an idol. In this literalization, the idolatrous deception of the first moment becomes readable. The ideal will reveal itself to be an idol. Step by step, the ideal is pursued by a devouring doppelganger, tearing apart all transcendence. This de-idealization follows the path of reification, or, to invoke Augustine, the path of carnalization of the spiritual. Rhetorically, this is effected through literalization. A Sentimental Education does little more than elaborate the progressive literalization of the Annunciation."
This isn't a specific language, this certainly isn't beautiful to read, in no way does it seem like "linguistic artistry" and more than anything it's just a pain in the ass to read.
I can no longer help here as I no longer know what exactly the target of your complaints is. It's sounding more now like you just read one bit from one essay and then made a thread about all academic writing
Limiting myself to that specific little bit that you've quoted there: Yeah, that's not good writing. That type of shit is symptomatic of literary theory and is steeped in semiotics crap. But, again, that style is specific to that methodological framework (semiotics) and the language of that field (literary theory, which, unfortunately, has seeped out into the philosophy of art more broadly and, at this point, into the humanities in general).
There are good reasons to consider that values might have no objective fundamental grounding, that capitalism is a corrosive ideology destined to fail via its own contradications, and that aesthetic preferences are arbitrary.
Learn yourself something here about objectivity, you postmodern heathen
Sadly I'm not convinced it's a specter. Rather it's a systemic failure of publishing systems and academia in general.
Too many writers ensconced in such language feel no obligation to tie their ideas back to empirical reality, to assess the worthiness of the frameworks they're working within, or even to engage with each other in productive ways.
Now we're talking
Too much of this writing that seems to have the self-perception of theoretical progress is, in reality, knocking out the substance of its own value from underneath. That's not to say you can't find entertainment in the text (I've sunk hours into
Enjoy Your Symptom! despite the fact that I probably could not explain a single chapter), or you can't appreciate the author's more accessible writing (I especially like
this analysis of
The Dark Knight Returns - Zizek's ability to soak up and articulate cultural varieties is undoubtedly incredible), but you have to be able to recognize the difference between productive philosophical writing and play writing.
I've never gotten the hate for Žižek's writing. I get hating Žižek's shtick, his public persona, but the writing itself - particularly
Looking Awry,
The Parallax View, and
Less than Nothing - is top-notch. What's difficult about reading Žižek is that he's read everyone and everything, so he'll string together references and allusions and quotes to 14 things in a single paragraph - or a single sentence! - and that can seem overwhelming. But it's not an indictment of academic writing and it's not even a stylistic problem. He's just dropping Lacan and Hegel and Kierkegaard and Schiller and Wittgenstein and Hitchcock and then he's off to another point to discuss Descartes and Kant and Benjamin and Weininger and
film noir and then he's off to another point and on and on like that.
It does feel like intellectual sprints, and if you don't know what he's referencing then of course you're not going to know what he's talking about. But I don't think he's a good example of the general line of critique of this thread regarding the ills of academic writing.
And then not complain when no one takes the political consequences of the play writing seriously.
The political Žižek is the only Žižek that I don't read. I mean, the dude loves Marx, Lenin, and Mao. I'd certainly hope that no one takes his political shit seriously
Anyone who thinks of an entire school if philosophy is dumb is, frankly, worthy of being totally ignored
Some shit needs to be called out as shit. Poststructuralism is retarded. Period. It's retards writing retarded shit that only retards think isn't retarded. There's serious danger in writing blank intellectual checks like this to all schools of thought, in thinking that "Since people read it there must be
something of merit in there." There might be, but there also might not be, and when there isn't, that needs to be communicated so people can spend their time reading shit that isn't retarded.