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David_Gerard comments on A Kick in the Rationals: What hurts you in your LessWrong Parts? - Less Wrong
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I have a lit-crit friend who I have known for a better part of a decade. We have an ongoing struggle to understand each other, and as part of this we will occasionally trade ideas the other finds incomprehensible. As part of this cultural exchange process, she decided to send me something about one of my subjects (econ) in 'her language', and linked me to this.
Needless to say, this was like a cannonball to my LessWrong Parts.
As much as I do find this sort of stuff distressing, I also find it useful for helping me explain precisely why I'm so confident in dismissing it as informationally bankrupt. The general retort from the literary type is that these sorts of texts contain lots of specialist language and ideas, and just as you wouldn't expect a lay-person to understand a maths or physics paper off the bat, you shouldn't expect to understand something like the above.
To which I respond "my arse". Papers in disciplines I consider to be respectable, but lack any deeper knowledge of, have a recognisable argument structure, even if I don't necessarily understand the arguments. Also, any epistemology worth having should demand claims be provided with means of substantiating them, or at the very least show why the status of the claim matters. Anything not meeting this criteria falls into Not-Even-Wrong territory.
(Also on a more speculative basis, if you're explaining a Very Hard Maths Principle to someone, your language may become more arcane depending on your audience, but the overall structure of the argument should be made in such a way that's easy for a brain to process, as both a pragmatic design principle and a courtesy to the reader; the above piece, which is amongst the more lucid critical theory stuff I've come across, seems wilfully hard for a brain to process. If someone can get onto a Ph.D. program and still have such abysmal communication skills, they can't be communicating anything that important.)
I should probably mention that I'm never sure whether my friend is trolling me or not.
Oh, Deleuze. D+G are interesting and thought-provoking but all but impenetrable. Imagine a textbook written in the style of an experimental novel. Surprise! That's actually your textbook. As with Derrida, I suggest you start with others' synopses, not the originals. Alternately, if you don't have any actual reason to read it (such as actually having a use for something that could reasonably be termed "critical theory"), just throwing them against the wall will likely save a lot of time.
What uses do people normally have for something termed "critical theory"?
Rent seeking, signaling(mostly to pretty specific groups), fun.
Pretty much. I have always tried to keep in mind that the actual justification of criticism is turn people onto good stuff and warn them off bad stuff.
It can also be justified by helping people who liked or didn't like something understand why, so they can seek or avoid those qualities in other works.
Oh yeah, turning noise into music. I think that's covered, though.
In my case, being a rock critic. (The money is much better in IT.) But really that I'm interested in art criticism for its own sake and read it for entertainment even when I know little or nothing about the art in question.