Help me understand this post-structuralist passage

Let me cut to the chase. What the fuck does this even mean? Below is a quotation from Judith Butler. This quote and author are known to me only from being openly mocked in other sources for the excessive opacity that has become characteristic of the genre:

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Originally posted by Judith Butler

“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.

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Generally I am capable of understanding complex English sentences if they have substance. Even when there are terms and references I don't understand, I'm generally able to determine what the author is trying to say about them. Not so in this case. Mainly all I can determine is that this is a syntactically valid English sentence describing how someone or something moved from a "structuralist account" to an "Althusserian theory", and in doing so brought the question of temporality into the question of structure. The author has helpfully (?) interposed her definitions of those terms, and I suppose it's her explanations that I'm most struggling to understand.

So, what does she want to say here? I'm asking for serious interpretations - let's just assume for the sake of discussion I've already had the passing thought that it may be nothing but elaborately contrived bullshit. But if someone does have it on good authority that this is in fact confirmed bullshit, I'd like to know that as well.

Hoo boy. In my opinion most literary theory is BS. It's hard to tell what's going on without context, but here is my best shot.

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“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways

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So, in a structuralist view, capital—basically, MONEY, forms all relationships. To ultra-simplify this, it means money dominates relationships like it does social class. Your wealth puts you in your social class and limits your social opportunities. You don’t see Bill Gates mingling with the bums.

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to a view of hegemony

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She is referring to CULTURAL hegemony here, which is the domination of one social class over another.

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in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation

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Power struggles get repeated and redefined a lot. What this refers to is Marxist theory, the idea that class struggle is central to social change. So what's been moving here is the idea that power is fixed by wealth to the idea that power can be reclaimed by struggle.

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brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure,

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So instead of static structure, we've got some change going on. Groovy.

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and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects

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Althusser isn't very important in this, basically she's just saying what she just said again, i.e., that we moved from Structuralism to Marxism in this convoluted sentence. I'm not very familiar with Althusser anyway.

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to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony

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We have changed our view of social structure and power distributions and are looking at it in a whole new way.

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as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

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Where and how power is reexamined will determine who gets the power next.


IN SUMMARY
We thought power was static and determined by money.
Now we know revolution is possible.

I presume you found this through Denis Dutton. Really, he says it best.

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To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it.

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Hope this helps.
Good luck.

Hey, Elyanna, you're pretty good at that! Cal or UCSB?

Thanks. I go to a Cal State.

Now that she transcribed that for you, you owe her dinner. It's right there in her contract.

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Originally posted by Glazer

Now that she transcribed that for you, you owe her dinner. It's right there in her contract.

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Yep. I like Thai, Mexican, Chinese, and burgers. But not crappy Chinese like China Bistro. Blech. ;)

Wow. I am in awe. Possibly even in love, but you'll need to remove that sheet first to know for sure.

Does anyone know of a (comprehensible) defense of critical theory I could read somewhere?

I feel like I shouldn't just dismiss something I don't understand, but it's rather hard to take it seriously.

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Originally posted by Excalibur

Does anyone know of a (comprehensible) defense of critical theory I could read somewhere?

I feel like I shouldn't just dismiss something I don't understand, but it's rather hard to take it seriously.

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But [after we read] we consider, reread, re-enjoy. Theory helps us to map out those responses, think what they amount to. It is surely a common observation that responses are not settled, that appreciation comes slowly, after much effort. Criticism is not a handing down of judgements, but an education in our own responses, of faculties which we need to appraise and extend our own work. . . .

But what purpose does theory serve in the immediate present, before we have grown to critical maturity? Perhaps we should call it a book of reference, something resembling those guides to grammar we consult when we're unsure of some expression. Theory will not dissuade us from calling something banal or plodding, but we shall know the grounds of such judgements. And if we reflect further we shall find ourselves asking more searching questions. While everyone wrote in much the same way, as in Augustan England, guiding principles could remain unexamined, but that is not the case today. Widely different views of art and society are canvassed in contemporary literature, and these determine how we respond to what grows increasingly more challenging and specialized.

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Radical theory was often wildly incoherent, but it dared to ask what had been overlooked in more traditional approaches. What purpose does language serve? How does it mediate between ourselves and the outside world? What happens when we view language through such disciplines as linguistics, psychiatry, sociology?

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From here, where there is a whole lot more. Written by a C. John Holcombe. Don't know who he is, but he likes his literary theory a whole lot.

The thing about any complex theory in a highly specialized field of research or study is that the language used to talk in specific, semantically discrete manner about it is going to appear like indecipherable gibberish to the layman (also known as jargon). One need only read a paper on mathematics, for instance, to understand that they way mathematicians use certain words is very different from the common vernacular; and so it should be as mathematicians need to be very precise about the meaning of their words. (For actual work, of course, mathematicians turn to symbolic algebraic languages, but in order to communicate in these the manner and method of them first has to be described in some kind of natural language.) Similarly, papers in the natural sciences, research engineering, and medicine often use very obscure terminology and complex (often overly so) grammar to convey a particular meaning or process. I'm a smart guy but most medical papers have me referencing Stedman's several times a page; papers on quantum mechanics often have me reading the same passage over and over again trying to grasp even a wisp of the author's original intent; and when it comes to Roger Penrose--who I am assured is a really smart guy in the same way that the Sun is hard to look at--I've only managed to penetrate a few score of pages into The Road To Reality, and am not convinced I really understand where he's going.

This is not to say that every passage of complex language is actually significant and meaningful; Charles Dodgson demonstrated that it is possible to write a book of semantic nothingness. (I would argue that James Joyce did the same thing, but only at mortal peril to my delicate skin.) Certainly many mid- to late-Twentieth century "intellectual movements" (such as post-structuralist literary criticism, Marxist dogma, certain brands of feminism) have used complex jargon in order to obscure ideas rather than convey them, and use language to subtly apply ad hominem and other logical fallacies to mislead and distract.

One test to discern the intellectual content of a passage is to recast it into simpler language; even if it loses some of the specifics and nuances, one should still be able to translate a well-understood concept or description into language capable of a ten-year-old. In the case of the cited passage, in absence of greater context, I would translate it as the following:

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The move from accepted, concrete ideas of social interaction to ideas dictated by an elite few and controlled by rote education and propaganda brought into question how rigidly people hold values and concepts, and a move from reasoning based on hard facts to ideas based on convoluted rationale allow the really sharp grifters to spin their bullshit more freely.

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It should go without saying that anyone who speaks in passive voice in order to paint a particular strawman as a dominant "hegemony" is likely full of crap, and also hasn't yet paid off their student loans.

Stranger

I am pleased that some very sharp people have appeared in this thread. I suppose I'm not as good as penetrating dense prose as I thought. A round of hegemony all around for everyone, on me, contingent on my debit card going through.

Wow, I actually get this now. It's just incredibly bloated and dense writing. I lack the theory depth to evaluate the correctness or importance of what she's said, and I suspect that it's not worth caring about either way, but I do see a coherent thought in there. Cool.

FWIW here's what I finally got out of it:

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The move from a structuralist account to a view of contingent-power hegemony brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of reified-structure Althusserian theory to a new theory in which hegemony is contingent upon changes in power, and so on and so forth, and I'm totally tweaked out of my nut on Adderall right now (I found no way of papering over the final bit of BS)

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