Last week I was assigned an article by Harvard English professor Homi Bhabha in my class on cultural pluralism. Bhabha is known in academic circles for his studies in post-colonialism and post-structuralism, but has also gained some notoriety for his preposterously palaverous prose style. And you’re right, I could just as easily have used some adjective like “wordy” or “verbose” or even “bad” to describe his writing, but Bhabha doesn’t seem to see it that way. He has a knack for taking the semi-discernible and turning it into gobbledy gook faster than you can say his last name. It’s this knack of his that makes reading him so incredibly frustrating, and while I’m sure the guy’s a genius, I can’t see the point in writing something that’s apprehensible to less than 5% of the world’s population (and that’s a generous estimation).

But then again, look at me. Here I am, writing a blog post that may or may not be read by about fifteen people, so what am I really saying here? Bhabha might not write for the masses, but he’s writing for a lot more than fifteen people. I guess I’m really just tired of dragging my average intelligence through the muddy marshes of academia. I should probably get some sleep.