Re:Postmodernism and Its Impact (2017)
by AnimalMuppet on Thursday June 04, 2020 @01:11PM
(#23419154)
It depends. If the idea is spread by people understanding it and agreeing with it, then incomprehensibility is bad. But if the idea is spread because people want to feel pride in knowing something beyond the reach of most people, then incomprehensibility is a positive. The obscurity makes it a kind of intellectual "Veblen good".
But at that point, it's not being propagated based on its truth or usefulness, but merely as a form of signalling "I'm one of the smart ones". I suspect that at least part of the success of postmodernism is due to this.
I do, but specifically, I would have thought that incomprehensibility is bad for spreading ideas. In order for ideas to spread, someone has to be willing to read these texts, overcome the hurdles of the dense language, and recognise something new, interesting and important; something they agree with. Incomprehensibility stands in the way of this process.