That sounds like it comes from one of those postmodern gabble generators. Too bad real pomo is indistinguishable from its parodies.

Sokal, you faught a losing battle.

I think you've been had. It really isnt safe to suppose that all leftists are humourless prigs. If you'd read more, you'd see that Chun does parody. No-one who takes his name from a gothic Jack Vance story about a tapestry of eyeballs could write that sort of guff with a straight face.

Butler: Just philosophy. Perfectly sensible to anyone who's had graduate courses in Marxist theory. It could be far worse.

Chun: I agree, he's yanking your chain. Or yanking my chain--I'm one who finds the last paragraph hilarious, because it's ripping on the very fuzzy writing style ("as a committed leftist"? Hello!) that you're criticizing.

So now I'm gently laughing at you for taking him seriously...

Chun trolled me once successfully too. He's very good.

Should Chun the Unavoidable be taken seriously? Is this person often writing in a tongue in cheek manner? Whatever, I find the blog to be utterly boring. The Onion is far funnier. Chun’s comments on politics are immature and banal.

If the text is self-debunking it is nevertheless post hoc, propter hoc a postmodern text. The style is reminiscent of and perhaps based on William Burroughs's cutup eclecticism, with un certain hommage to the narrative jejeuneries de M Python.

You can't front on Chun, Dan. Seriously, don't even try. He is a mythic character, much like Fafblog's Medium Lobster. He is a creature of the internet, possibly with magical powers. I'm afraid he may use them for evil, though. Relatedly, it is impossible to tell when he is joking.

I'm not saying that the original post by Chun is funny, but the fact that you took it seriously is very funny. And people say liberals have no sense of humor.

I found it by way of Unfogged. If you found it through someone, it's polite to say who. Trust me, you're not protecting them from anything -- it's a joke.

Yes, Chun is yanking your chain. It's parody, Dan.

Just like this excerpt from what I consider to be the definitive article on postmodernism:
http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/decon.html

The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.

Just a question:

Why bother mocking a rather obscure guy with a website?

Whatever his writing style, he has one of the best pseudonyms I've ever seen.

What Belle said. Chun's high-point of parody is probably his wine review, a la Bainbridge.

What's also interesting is that Chun is quite well known in the lefty/academic corner of the blogosphere, where we were all--sooner or later--educated in How To Read Chun. But apparently he's not at all known elsewhere. Put it in your study, Dan!

The style is reminiscent of and perhaps based on William Burroughs's cutup eclecticism, with un certain hommage to the narrative jejeuneries de M Python.

More likely the style was intended to emulate the author from whom "Chun the Unavoidable" derived his name, Jack Vance (my favorite author as well.)

Jack Vance would never write like that.

"Butler: Just philosophy. Perfectly sensible to anyone who's had graduate courses in Marxist theory. "

Graduate courses in Marxist theory? That's a put-on, right?

Yes, I can't detect any flavour of Jack Vance in it either. I was sort of joking really. But cut-up does come to mind.

The failed grad student who goes by the handle "Chun" (after a character in a science fiction novel) and who by his own description lives in his mother's basement in Tulsa, OK or some such place is scarcely to be compared to a $250,000/yr tenured academic superstar like Judith Butler.

Beyond the injustice of slaging the poor and obscure with a hammer that should be reserved for the rich and famous, Daniel has violated another key cannon of Internet life. He has feed a troll. For poor Chun is a troll and Daniel's bait is the food that will keep him going for weeks.