In college, I took a class that assigned Geertz's book 'Local Knowlege'. I remember one passage where Geertz quoted from the diary of a Dutch sailor in the 19th century who expressed dismay at the Balinese custom of burning a man's wife when her husband died. Geertz was critical of this man for not trying to 'understand and empathize with a foreign culture'! The whole book was filled with crap like that.
If you are interested in this sort of stuff, here is a link about a fake paper that a physics professor got printed in a postmodern cultural studies journal:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
It's a good example of the intellectual standards of the Left.
Also, the postmodern essay generator is good for some laughs:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/Thanks for the links.