As a fascinating prologue to the main action, I came across the piece below when checking on what I think proved to be a miss-spelling of the phrase In abstentia(absentia), when called upon by the friendly blogger thing to come up with a title for the hotbed of intellectual delectation that is this here blog. Clouds silver linings etc so I stumbled upon said piece below which displays the wonder of words placed in succession in the sometimes successful, sometimes vain attempt to serve the purposes of the author whio lies behinds such symbol manipulation.
'Father Jerome's PSYCHOSOCIOLOGICAL DICTIONARY of KEYWORDS/PHRASES used in his QUALIA III Monograph.
"'in abstentia' - the realities of legitimation"
The GENERAL CONTEXT of such use is:
'in abstentia' - the realities of legitimation: In order to understand that the social effects of the common or learned (i.e., taught, as by pedagogic communications) illusions (maya), which are sociologically implied in the system of relations between the educational system (the School) and the structure of class relations, are not illusory, it is necessary to go back to the principle which governs this system of relations. Legitimation of the established order, by the School, presupposes social recognition of the legitimacy of the School, a recognition resting in turn on misrecognition of the delegation of authority which establishes that legitimacy, or, more precisely, on misrecognition of the social conditions of a harmony between structures and habitus sufficiently perfect to engender misrecognition of the habitus as a product reproducing what produces it and correlative recognition of the structure of the order thus reproduced. Thus, the educational system objectively tends, by concealing the objective truth of its functioning, to produce the ideological justification of the order it reproduces by its functioning.'
This is a particularly fine display of intellectual writing in which the meaning, if it exists, is hidden within an impenetrable maze of verbiage, thus preserving the mystery of The Word from the academically unwashed. The final sentence is actually quite an excellent one in terms of the clear display of meaning & indeed is a meaning worth displaying. Perhaps the preceding lines did actually lead to this fine conclusion but I admit to being utterly in the dark as to whether this is the case or not. Which, of course, is to the credit of the author- the lines of Jesus coming to mind: "so that 'Seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand.'"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
it's gobshite bollocks and one reason i'm glad i was twice rejected for PhD funding. i almost wrung the neck of an apple polishing academic who defended this kind of shite when i was at university. These people are filthy fucking scum and i'd crack their bastard heads in with a lead pipe if i could get away with it.
They are worse than chavs.
And I know how you feel about chavs, Elberry. Strong words but probably justified. Though what's the point in writing about deep issues unless one can show how deep these issues are by writing indecipherable gobbledeegook.
No ambiguity there, Elberry. By the way, what was the subject of your PhD?
my PhD would have been on The Devil himself, as he is in literature from Genesis B (O-English) through to Thomas Mann, though taking account of later, 2-dimensional Satans like Glen Duncan's. Your namesake, Neil, has actually written books about him: i kept meaning to ask if you were he, but it seemed a bit of a coincidence.
Given that every writer on my Satanic list was nearly executed, with the exception of Marlowe (who was actually executed, or murdered by goons in Walsingham's pay, anyway), maybe it's for the best that i never got the chance to write about it! - though having said that, all my writers escaped by the skin of their teeth.
Just noticed your response to Neil, El. Sounds a fascinating subject...I spose you're familiar with the famous Ivan Karamazov-Deviul encounter in Brothers Karamazov. Your subject obviously not half dry enough for the cozy, somnambulent academics.
i fear so. My last piece of academic writing in 2001, my MA dissertation on Tolkien, was already so off the rails & doing its own odd thing (quoting Hunter S Thompson for example), that i think now, six years on, anything i wrote would be utterly indigestible by academics.
i love Dostoevsky's Satan, an interesting precursor to Mann's, shabby and diabolic...
i am still pondering writing something long on Satan but i think the style would have to be utterly different to what i've done before.
Haven't read Mann's Faustus but I have been thinking of it. I was a bit worried Mann might be a bit dry but you recommend him?
Mann is dry-ish...for me he's at the other end of the spectrum from the Romantic, undisciplined Hermann Hesse. When Hesse is good, he's v good, but most of his stuff i find unreadable drivel. Mann was a Classicist by temperament, and most of his stuff is very good. Dr Faustus is one of my favourite novels, chilling & familiar. i'm (slowly) learning German mainly in order to be able to one day read it in the original
You've made up my mind about Faustus- a subject I'd have a natural affinity with. I do, or at least did, tend to enjoy Hesse with some reservations. The one I'd probably re-read primarily being The Glass Bead Game.
Post a Comment