Joe Malchow sees fit to tackle the language of "postmodernism" (more accurately, Continental philosophy) via a link to some asinine National Review post. Joe titters on about this quote from Martin Heidegger: "In the naming, the things named are called into their thinging. Thinging, they unfold world, in which things abide and so are abiding ones." This is an open letter in response:
Joe,
Did you consider for a second that this is an English translation of a German writer, German being a language which regularly features--and not just in philosophy--neologisms that frequently turn a word from one part of speech into another? And while the sentence is gruesomely circular, in context this circularity is much more reasonable and comprehensible, even poetic. Besides, I could take sentences from the Bible at random that would sound almost this bad.
I also find it highly amusing that you are taking on the mantle of righteous language maven when you have had some howlers not only recently, but consistently through the time I've been reading your blog.
It also troubles me that you so enthusiastically applaud a post that begins: "Top ten reasons why Postmodernist philosophers should be burned alive in public squares atop piles of their books." Such rabid anti-intellectualism is ever the mark of someone who has set severe limits on his intellectual development.
Finally, I highly doubt that you have read, or made any attempt to understand the context of any of those sentences, or encountered their authors other than in dismissive references by ignorant conservative writers. If I am wrong and you are actually, in your spare time, a scholar of Continental philosophy, please correct my misapprehension.
Thinging of you,
Andrew
In defense of Joe--who I think should be burned alive in a public square atop a pile of printouts of his blog posts--I don't think he's really tackled anything in that post. Some of his posts that pretend to be "analysis" are pretty nasty stuff. This is just a link to a NRO post with an "I find this funny" tag attached. Nothing to see here.
ReplyDeleteBesides, some of the quotes are a little ridiculous. I assume that context and accounting for the difficulties of translation might make them seem less so, but maybe not.
Joe hasn't made an argument for scorning postmodernists, and I don't think he's pretending that he has..
yeah, i actually agree with that.
ReplyDeleteplus, i have it on good authority (my homies) that malchow is a complete opera slut, can't get enough of it, always going on about the opera, etc. so i doubt he's really anti-intellectual, more likely he just thought some of the quotes sounded silly. and out of context, they totally do.
You can pick and choose when to be anti-intellectual. Many do.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous--I should have said something like "addressed" instead of "tackled," but he specifically set this in the context of his mini-series on abuse of the English language: "I offer them as a sober course advisory for readers in school, and as an annex to recent posts here on language." He's not just saying, "I find this funny." He's aligning himself with the original poster a lot more deeply than just passing an amusing link on.