alt Hacker NewsThis happens to me every time I take a quick look at the “high culture” world, be it literature, art, music, or general intellectualism. I have a minor in philosophy and consider myself reasonably well-read, but today’s avantgarde is nothing like that of the past, and seems above all else designed to be exclusionary.
Exclusionary isn't the term. I'm not sure there is one specific term in English, but today's high culture all seems to be predicated upon feigning enlightenment, or pretending to have a deep understanding.
My wife's sister did an art degree, for example, and she and her friends wouldn't stop gushing about purposefully-inscrutable postmodern nonsense like Derrida, who was an absolute hack.
All that aside, N+1 sounds like it's the sort of thing I would enjoy read. I didn't get the sense that it was written to be exclusionary, but maybe I just didn't get the full picture from TFA.