The Art (?) Of Communication

After reading the following sentence [reportedly] written by Judith Butler, I was momentarily stunned.

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."

Since I had recently admitted to the many readers of this blog (ha ha) that I recognize myself as being a dunderhead, I was not surprised that my immediate reaction after reading that sentence was: "Huh."

I had no idea what I had just read, so I re-read the sentence...but still knew not what I had read.

After a third fruitless perusal, I abandoned any further attempt. Some readers would probably pursue the matter, studying and contemplating and applying much extended mental exertion to puzzling out the author's intended meaning.

Not I.

And I vowed again to do my best to always compose simple, direct, and understandable sentences and paragraphs in my future writings. So that particular complicatedly-composed sentence did prove itself to be of some value to me.

For, you see, writing (in my opinion) should be an effective form of communication, a method of passing one's individual instructions, ideas, or concepts from the writer to the reader. Not a celebration of the writer.

What is gained by disguising or otherwise concealing the intended meaning of a communication? The creation of Art?

Okay . . .

Here is a recently discovered, long-forgotten picture that brings back some achingly personal memories.

Jackie Curtis

Sigh . . .