Pondering Pomo Perversity

Powerlineblog ^ | 09/20/2024 | Steven Hayward

[DFG]

Robert Pondisco of the American Enterprise Institute responded to a query on Twitter/X yesterday on the question of why academic writing is so awful. His pithy answer:

The opacity of academic prose arises from the epistemological imperative to operationalize disciplinary jargon, facilitating intra-specialized discourse while obfuscating heterogenous interpretive accessibility and perpetuating a recursive dialectic of erudition and exclusion.

Yup, that pretty much nails it.

My young philosopher pal Spencer Case got the wise idea in his head to ask ChatGPT to render the Gettysburg Address as written by postmodern/radical feminist icon Judith Butler, and this is the result:

In a performative act of memorialization, we gather here to invoke the memory of a conflict that, through the violent demarcations of power and sovereignty, has sought to reconstitute the fragile architecture of a nation founded on the equivocal premise of freedom and equality. The battlefield upon which we stand—this material site—serves as both a testament to the entangled lives that have been lost and as a symbolic space where the performative nature of nationhood is both affirmed and contested.

[17th Miss Regt]

Now that is hilarious! Also, see the embedded link for the Gettysburg address as a Powerpoint presentation.

[The Duke]

TRANSLATION: “They use industry buzz words.”