I caught that too. What does it mean? That women and minorities must be spoken to using incomprehensible jargon or that you are too dumb to understand your condition and must be led like children by your betters? The latter, I suspect.
Actually, I think critics have a duty to make their ideas comprehensible to all. I have sometimes felt at a loss at conventions with the decontructivist poststructuralist jargon all around me. Do these writers even understand each other?
I can't speak about conventions but at faculty parties I often observe grad students being harangued by their profs. The poor students nod sagely but have a glazed expression that tells me they aren't hearing (or understanding) a thing that's being said to them.
When I teach a course in art criticism, we have a great time derailing some of this theory. It seems the simpler the art work, especially minimal sculpture, the more complex the argument for it.
Another one of my pet peeves has been the attack on beauty in art by much of the academy. Art criticism is another field contaminated by revolutionary fervor and jargon. That being said, I'm looking forward to going to the reopened MOMA.
Doesn't this sloppy writing just show the dead-end thinking of liberals?
Sure does.
I don't think I get to enough parties.