Bad Writing

The late Denis Dutton inaugurated the Bad Writing Contest in his magazine Philosophy and Literature. It had a short run from 1995 to 1998 but served as a warning to parents and students of what sort of rubbish they were likely to encounter in their sojourn in the hallowed halls of academia. More, some serious nonsense is an acceptable expression of what apparently is thought. 

The winner in 1996 was the philosopher Roy Bhaskar, founder of the movement known as “Critical Realism.”  Here is just part of one sentence:

 

Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal—of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual . . .

 

I'm unsure what is more astonishing, that this was published or that someone thought it a reasonable creation to submit. Worse, writing is an expression of something; in this case that "something" seems significantly disordered.