First up, I thought it was a bit piss-weak to write it in English — if you want to really be different, write it in Swahili or one of those African clicking languages instead. Secondly, whatever the content was, it failed to reach the audience, who sat there silent and confused as our lecturer pestered us to guess the meaning of the extract.

Perhaps it was MEANT to make no sense, to try and make the audience realise just how impossible it is to truly understand another culture.

In that case, well done, it worked. The only problem is that suddenly nobody in the 200 seat lecture theatre really cared for postmodernism, bar a few of the crazies who presumably will take the lecturer’s place upon his retirement.

It’s such a shame that the core messages of theories such as relativism — treat others equally and with respect — don’t get through. A lot of the problems with colonialism in the past still echo today, yet the average person doesn’t seem to comprehend this and just assumes that fitting in with Western culture will solve everything. In theory, who knows? In practice, it doesn’t.

That’s not to say we must bend over backwards for other cultures, but it does mean making an attempt to listen to them and avoid stereotyping them in Herald Sun editorials.

It’s common sense really, and the core messages of what these academics say have really changed society in positive ways over the decades. It’s just a shame that they feel the need to write in some gibberish creole language.

Here’s a hint — you’re not being radical. You’re being pretentious twats. Write in plain English and perhaps more people will start to take your views seriously…

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/postmodernism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Hilarious. Or sad. Both, I suppose.

I agree with you too Elliot. But maybe that’s just my upbringing talking. Or possibly I simply don’t exist, at least in the way this post-colonial patriarchal society EXPECTS me to exist, imposing a sort of 21st century mode of atomic configuration so that I would appear to exist from certain angles, but from the totally and valid and relevant perspective of alternate cultures (particularly a 5th century BCE goatherder living near the Tigris) of course there’s no way by which I could be deemed to be real.…

…or something

I would have to say I agree with you James. But in the end…it’s all relative…see what i did there?

That quote is normally attributed to Patrick Moynihan (a NY Senator) who certainly said it long before Harris did.

Just picking a nit.