Post-This-or-That - Noam Chomsky

Quite regularly, “my eyes glaze over” when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don’t understand: math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the later case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed. Perhaps the explanation lies in some personal inadequacy, like tone-deafness. Or they may be other reasons.

Noam Chomsky, Racionality/Science and Post-This-or That, 1992 Included in Chomsky on Democracy and Education, p.93