This feels less like a funny joke and more like politically a irresponsible statement. I am, most certainly, reading too much into this and I will always joke about how dense some post-struct and pomo is but we need to stop with the "theory is incomprehensible and foreign" bit https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1340265630260457474

Theory (in the sense used by Jameson) is not incomprehensible. It is however sometimes written in a specialist language because it is, in fact, a specialist language

This is because study of the arts and humanities, the social sciences, and philosophy are specialisms just as much as the much vaunted STEM subjects

Now, there are certainly good arguments for taking a more "plain words" approach to theory. I don't agree with them but they are well made arguments and I have some sympathy with them. Accessibility is definitely an issue

But one of the reason the types of theory emerging from (primarily) French thought in the 60s are so specialist is because they are engaging with language and often critiquing the apparent "obviousness" of language, culture, and what we call nature (which is really just culture)

Now, when I write culture and nature in the above tweet, I'm using them in a specialised sense. Nature doesn't mean flowers and stuff. It refers rather to an idea that certain things and concepts exist outside of culture, that they are something like a "law of nature"

So on the one hand the language is specialist and on the other it is a deliberate "making strange" of language in order to emphasise that language is not obvious and transparent. There is also stuff about language not as something that describes concepts but creates them

It should also be noted that I'm fairly certain Foucault was making a joke. But then I also think Baudrillard is funny so I'm not really any judge. But if we follow Nietzsche (who actually started it all, even though Marx gets all the credit) laughter and dance are very important

With "theory" and often with continental philosophy, style is very important. Hugely so with someone like Cixous or Baudrillard. Of course theory will tell us style is very important with empiricism and the sciences too - to give the appearance of truth and transparency

Empiricism CANNOT admit this. It cannot allow that there is such a thing as a "style of truthiness" and that language must be transparent and all that foreign nonsense is obstructionist

But I can't be bothered to get into that on Twitter. I may do film-philosophy but really It's FILM-philosophy

Anyway, tl;dr if you work in the arts, humanities, and social sciences this turn against theory should bother you. Even if you are supremely sceptical of anything post- and quite like facts actually this should worry you. It's just more humanities bashing.

And by this I mean "the government pretending to understand Foucault and to care about people while praising good old fashioned British empiricism" it's a Gradgrindian attack on the humanities etc as valid knowledge production and specialist field