Or maybe rather, engineering and the sciences, have, to a greater degree, been very differently shaped due to their different connections to commercial forces.

Critical theory invites us to step away from an idea of there being some kind of realm of pure, valid thinking/knowledge that might be corrupted/shaped by either academic structures (as Morningstar finds in critical theory), or commerce (as Morningstar finds in engineering and science), or connections to reality and instead explore how any human practice is connected to, shaped by and shaping of all those things and more.

Morningstar is on to something here in explaining critical theory's faults as the result of some structural, social/culture forces, but ends up misrecognizing his own insight for something that derives from intrinsic qualities of critical theory itself rather than how it participates in specific historical periods.

Morningstar steps away from his clever ridicule to finally reveal what he found valuable in his exploration of critical theory.

Surprised to see Baudrillard categorized as harder? more opaque? more sophisticated? than Derrida... Someone who had read both might switch the order...

I can't find it right now, but recently came across an example of how a different field, perhaps closer to Morningstar's, has experienced a kind of "drift", wherein a sizable portion of artificial intelligence research was characterized as being of low quality and published only due to a small "in group" colluding.

One of the things critical theory does is try to understand how culture works beyond this or that individual human interaction with say, one specific text. Part of this line of thinking is that culture (a critical theorist might say "discourse") has its own patterns, histories, structures, effects, etc. This might be why Morningstar finds the idea that a text could "deconstruct itself" fantastical.

Again Morningstar shows a lack of recognition that academia (most especially in the USA) operates in a marketplace, even though he describes some of its market characteristics elsewhere.

So for example, if a computer program had one primary database and one replica of the primary database that copied the primary database nightly, a computer scientist wouldn't recognize that setup as a hierarchy with two elements?

Does Morningstar think that math too suffers from the same issues he finds in critical theory, or just Godel's incompleteness theorem (I'm assuming that's what Morningstar is alluding to)? Explore a deep discussion about whether Godel's incompleteness theorem is a cheap trick.

Or is questioning labels and categories a quite legitimate move given that one of the primary focuses of critical theory is to look at how labels and catetgories shape understanding?

Morningstar's big takeaway.

Morningstar frames his inquiry as a crime investigation.

hmmm...this needs to be unpacked...I might start by suggesting that critical theory does indeed often explore how judgements of quality and truth are shaped by politics, power, desire, knowledge, etc, but that's not a point against such work, but rather a recognition of part of its main practice.

Cleverness is another matter...there's quite a bit of cleverness here in Morningstar's post, so should we judge it less worthy?

I would suggest a different understanding: Much of what's happened in critical theory (especially the parts more visible to "outsiders") is deeply embedded in "mainland" contexts, including, most importantly for critical theory, being embedded in the expansion of higher education in the USA after the GI Bill and the long tradition of "pragmatic" thinking in mainstream US thought that may find its roots in Protestantism and flower in the mythic "American" "everyman".

Morningstar misses here how he goes on to describe exactly how academia acts as a marketplace and how academics do get paid by convincing somebody else that "what [they] are doing is worth" payment. The idea that academia is not participating in market-based dynamics seems like just the old "ivory tower" myth.

hmmm...so projects that participate in the marketplace are inherently...what? this needs to be thought through...see below where Morningstar returns to this point and suggests the answer is something like "more tied to reality".

This is a key point: Complex, unobvious topics can not always be talked about in simple, plain language anyone can understand. There are texts that needlessly obfuscate and maybe something easier to understand can be said about almost anything by way of an introduction or at least to explain "why it matters", but critical theory at its core is pretty deep work, resting on a lot of other material (eg, philosophy), and exploring areas that a lot of folks aren't deeply acquainted with. The fact that much critical theory is not easy of a newcomer to understand is not proof that it is bogus.

I wouldn't recommend Culler's worthy book as a primer — it's more like an advanced read. One might actually do far better just reading wikipedia entries on a few critical theorists and theories, or maybe a book like Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, which I might not agree with in places but can be an approachable starting place for someone new to critical theory.

These seem like the three most common uninformed opinions about critical theory, with maybe the middle being most commonly held, though perhaps in close competition with the third, but with most adherents unwilling to undertake Morningstar's due diligence and so just jump directly to writing it all off as the bogus work of clowns.

But is Trump's position the result of an excess of something, as Baudrillard is arguing? Or is this just the facile observation that Trump's accomplishments are not really that real.

And the final call to action is economic, not cultural. It makes all the earlier handwaving about culture seem beside the point. The models for change here seem contradictory and either/or.

This is what the article could be about if it weren't for the author's distaste for contemporary culture.

Burying the lead. At the top of the article, media overload is the culprit. Down here, globalized economics finally enters.

more distaste for the plebian

Why is this powerful economic factor always made to see like an effect of a cultural project?

We? Or not the author? Just other folks?

the author doesn't like pomo very much

nostalgia as a pomo characteristic, but also a key part of these narratives contra pomo

loaded phrase; also would Debord consider himself a fellow traveller with Baudrillard?

the US gateway drug to pomo

this is a key part of the argument: media overload as a causal factor

Ladies and gentlemen, this is postmodernism in a nutshell.