A champagne socialist reflects on Western culture and the Universe... and whilst gazing at his navel, he comes up with a lot of useless lint. It is the fruits of this navel-gazing that form the substance of this blog.
I was wrong
Published on October 29, 2005 By Champas Socialist In Blogging
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article called "a history of liberalism". It was crap. I apologise. What I wrote had nothing to do with postmodernism, as Chakgogka pointed out.

When I write about postmodernism at Uni, I explain myself well. Part of this is because I actually have the sources by my side and I have to reference them. This means that I don’t contradict myself all over the place and I stick to what they said. References keep you on track and remove contradictions. That’s why I am disparaging about pseudo-intellectuals. Yes I’m an intellectual elitist. And yet I went all pseudo-intellectual on my blog. Bygones.

When I write on JU I also try to make it more understandable to people who haven’t studied this stuff. The result often seems to be that I dumb it down and change the meaning. It also meant that I used outdated, modernist interpretations of class in an attempt to make a postmodern point. BakerStreet picked up on that. Then I went off on some tangent about Britney Spears which had nothing to do with what I was talking about.

Anyway, if you read it, sorry. It was crap. Ignore it ever happened.

Comments
on Oct 30, 2005
Anyway, if you read it, sorry. It was crap.

Well, I didn't think so. I just found it dense, in the sense that an awful lot of ideas were crammed into a few paragraphs (with inevitable over-simplifications), some of which I didn't really agree with. It did, however, make me go away and think about why I didn't agree with them. So, really I'd like more rather than fewer articles of this kind.

When I write on JU I also try to make it more understandable to people who haven’t studied this stuff.

This is an excellent aim, because it's actually also a useful way of making any difficult subject understandable to yourself (i.e. does any set of ideas, when stripped of its technical jargon and 'discourse markers' for those 'in the know' still make plain sense). Writing for a general rather than a specialist audience is a much maligned but admirable skill. If you feel that this one didn't work, please give it another shot. For all the fur that flies here in the course of sometimes robust debate, JU is still a fairly safe and forgiving environment to take those risks.
on Oct 30, 2005
Thanks Chak. Maybe. One day.
on Oct 30, 2005
(in the midst of an extended, postmodern study of borges)

im sorry i missed your article . . . .

tbt
on Oct 30, 2005
I understand trying to 'dumb it down'.  But in so doing, you get into the 30 second sound bite.  As it is, you can write long ones, and then some of us will go "um ok", and others will pick on parts.  But best to be accurate than short.  I dont agree with you much, but as lefties go, you teach me a lot more than most any others.
on Nov 01, 2005
Taboo, it's still there. I didn't delete it. But I wouldn't advise reading it.

Dr Guy, thankyou that is very flattering. I don't agree with you very much, but you're the most eloquent JU Rightie.