Of course there is. It's just that some fields attract more of it than others.
1.) I had to find a way to turn the word "deconstruction" into an adjective. I could have recast the sentence to avoid having to do this, but I am lazy.
2.) The word "bastardization" was perhaps too strong. I did not mean to imply that the interdisciplinary nature of critical theory is negative in any way. I only meant to say that in some particular instances, the integration of fields in critical theory is used less for the purpose of uniting them coherently than for obscuring all involved.
3.) It is difficult to unite these types of theories under one banner, which is why I chose to name only a few which I believe to generally contain a lot of bullshit (and also because they are the ones that I am most familiar with). This does not exclude the possibility that there could be many great theorists that include themselves under such headings as I have listed (though there is a general reluctance to do this among the 'postmodernists' anyway). I am only referring to some of the bigger representatives of these fields such as Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze, etc... whose work I find very difficult to take seriously. I did not mean to make a blanket condemnation of the field, especially given that even the theories that share a given heading can vary widely from one another in concept and methodology.
I think it's unfair to imply that most (<-- it comes out that way in your second point) Critical theorists are trying to be obfuscatory. Besides, this a problem a great deal of 'pure' philosophers have too... certain literary writers are famous for it (Faulkner is unwieldy and Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is one big cryptogram)... I think maybe one reason Critical Theory tends to get confusing is because it's dealing with very difficult subject matter, like the nature of the copula (attribution, existence, etc.).
But I'll give this to you... a lot of postmodernism can get very tiring. I just don't want the excellent example of interdisciplinary learning to be lost... I think the next ten or twenty years will see a lot of scholars who try to correct this imbalance and bring out the best in Critical Theory... I think Ken Wilber's an excellent example of what can be great about the influence of postmodernism.
Deleuze makes a lot of sense to me (at least in his work with Guattari)!
As for 3... yes... it's so very complicated... half the point of postmodernism (and a side effect of Critical Theory) is the tendency to want to displace everything and break down structures, which is very difficult to do. One of my academic/life's goals is to reveal the utter stupidity and excessively dangerous false paradigm of "East and West". If I ever write that book I need to write, I'm pretty sure most people will think I'm crazy, talking about nothing, or just plain boring. But it's important to me. And I think this tends to happen with a lot of the people we're talking about.
Derrida's a good example... he's so very important... and yet so misunderstood... if one can take the time to break it down, it does make sense.
I'd like to add that Nagarjuna, one of my heroes, a Madhyamika Buddhist from India, is a major anticipation of this trend in thought. Most people find him tiresome and completely incomprehensible... but I see great meaning in his work...
I guess it depends very greatly on the individual writer... if deconstruction has taught us anything, it's that generalizing great movements often leads to antinomies.
hilosophy, NF:Literature, I'm not sure that there is a relationship. Are you talking about the actual practice of philosophy/literature or the propensity of either type to choose these as fields of study?
