{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

why French philosophy and American literary theory sound so full of shiit

Of course, replace the double i in shiit with a single i.

Well, the search engines have really turned to craap, thanks to some kind of monkey business behind the scenes involving MONEY, most likely.  Money has turned the Internet to shiit.

The best place to look for answers to the question posed, or at least a good place to start, is in a book by Jonathan Franzen called THE KRAUS PROJECT.

It has to to with the differences between Romance-language peoples (LATIN-based: French, Italian, Spanish) and Germanic-language peoples (GERMANIC-based: German, English, etc).    That is, Amerikans think they are "cool" when vacationing in France or Italy; but they would have to give a very good reason for visiting Germany, which is so "uncool").   But I like uncool better: functionality is what I admire.    In the USA, "African-Americans" are considered "cool" or even "Italians" - cool ... but not anything German.   German is not cool, not hip.    MAC artsy computers are considered "cool" whereas generic PCs are just "functional" ... although the one has tried to mimic the other.

Maybe it is my disdain for "being cool," that is, because I am not interested in being "cool" that makes me kind of cool, even if I don't want to be cool. 

No.  I am definitely in the German camp, for sheezy.  I don't care about the "new cool look."   Fuuck mobile and GUI, I'm all about the command line, mutter futters.   

I have to admit that some of the literary theory and French "postmodern" philosophy can be fun to explore, but my goodness fuucking gracious, how much bullshiit can one keep between one's ears before one considers the possibility that there are unseen forces at work in this world that are out to drive us all insane?    Does it make people feel smart to write in circles with oh-so-clever jargon whose sole purpose seems to tell us over and over again in no uncertain terms that all our problems can be blamed on our being "Europeanized"?

"Good French literary theory did for mediocre American scholars exactly what Kraus claims that Heinrich Heine's breezy, neologism-coining, Frenchified German did for the latter-day  journalistic hacks of Vienna: it allowed you to feel and sound smart and au courant without actually having to think for yourself."

(To be au courant is to be well-informed about something.)

How can one not feel that there is a very organized conspiracy against coherency?

Maybe there is no such conspiracy, and that this just happens to be the tip of an iceberg.

EUREKA! 

Could the demarcation that Franzen is pointing out in The Kraus Project be similar to Robert Pirsig's split between Romantic versus Classical Understanding?

“A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understandig sees it primarily in term of immediate appearance. If you were to show an engine or a mechanical drawing or electronic schematic to a romantic it is unlikely he would see much of interest in it. Is has no appeal because the reality he sees is its surface. Dull, complex lists of names, lines and numbers. Nothing interesting. But if you were to show the same blueprint of schematic or give the same description to a classical person he might look at it and then become fascinated by it because he sees that within the lines and shapes and symbols is a tremendous richness of underlying form.

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuïtive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. […]

The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws – which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behaviour. […]

Although surface ugliness is often found in the classic mode of understanding it is not inherent in it. There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known. It is not an esthetically free and natural style. It is esthetically restrained. Everything is under control. Its value is measured in terms of the skill with which this control is maintained.

To a romantic this classic mode often appears dull, awkward and ugly, like mechanical maintenance itself. Everything is in terms of pieces and parts and components and relationships. Nothing is figured out until it’s run through the computer a dozen times. Everything’s got to be measured and proved. Oppressive. Heavy. Endlessly grey.  The death force.

Within the classic mode, however, the romantic has some appearances of his own. Frivolous, irrational, erratic, untrustworthy, interested primarily in pleasure seeking. Shallow. Of no substance. Often a parasite who cannot or will not carry his own weight. A real drag on society. By now these battle lines should sound a little familiar.

This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no point at which these visions of reality are unified.

And so in recent times we have seen a huge split develop between a classic culture and a romantic counterculture – two worlds growing alienated and hateful toward each other with everyone wondering if it will always be this way, a house divided against itself. No one wants it really – despite what his antagonists in the other dimension might think.”   (Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

Come to think of it, my own personal "Understanding" might actually include both kinds of understanding; and yet, the protagonist in Pirsig's philosophical autobiography states, " ... no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no point at which these visions of reality are unified."

There is something so close to my face that it could bite my nose off, and yet I swear I cannot see it!