Mining "Meta"
I don't quite understand Roger Kimball's criticism of the term "meta" in Safire's language piece today:
It's verbal shorthand that expresses not a depth but an absence of thought. You'll find it in the slums of contemporary literary and art criticism.
Is he talking about "meta" as a prefix, or as a stand-alone word? Any fool can see that "meta" as a stand-alone word is intrinsically ironic (a subversive shorthand for frothy postmodern self-reflexivity). I suspect that, as a prefix, it is at least half the time ironic as well. In other words, most of the time "meta" functions not as a chintzy postmodernist flourish, but as a backhanded slap to postmodernism. So what is Kimball complaining about, except maybe the 50% or less of the time when the term is used unironically as a prefix?
I think he's looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
It's verbal shorthand that expresses not a depth but an absence of thought. You'll find it in the slums of contemporary literary and art criticism.
Is he talking about "meta" as a prefix, or as a stand-alone word? Any fool can see that "meta" as a stand-alone word is intrinsically ironic (a subversive shorthand for frothy postmodern self-reflexivity). I suspect that, as a prefix, it is at least half the time ironic as well. In other words, most of the time "meta" functions not as a chintzy postmodernist flourish, but as a backhanded slap to postmodernism. So what is Kimball complaining about, except maybe the 50% or less of the time when the term is used unironically as a prefix?
I think he's looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
posted by hellisotherpeople at 2:11 PM
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