[Fwd: Re: Butler on Spivak (was SZ)]

[Katha Pollitt]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 20 Nov 1999, Katha Pollitt wrote:
> >
> > > writing. Butler's just a bad writer --verbose, turgid, jargonistic.[SNIP]
> >
> > So she's a little wordy. Doesn't mean she doesn't have smart things to say
> > or that her ideas are invalid, though. [SNIP]
> 
> Mostly on the say-so of posters to this or other maillists I spent a good
> deal of time on Judith Butler. (*Bodies That Matter*, an NLR article,
> her sections of *Feminist Contentions*) And I have never considered
> the charge of "bad writing" to be a legitimate challenge to any writer's
> content. (I see the claim that form and content are inseparable as
> a major 20th c. superstition. Content is inseparable from *some* form,
> but there may be many forms, including badly written ones, that express
> the same content. To put it another way, unless paraphrase is possible,
> society is impossible.)
> 
> Carrol

 Carroll, it is Butler herself who resists the notion that her ideas can
be paraphrased--not her critics.  That is her justification for the way
she writes: any other way would not convey her meaning. My question to
her would be: so how can  anyone, including JB herself,teach or discuss
her work? discussion involves paraphrase, unpacking meaning requires
using different words than the original ones. 

  If she would say, heck I know I'm a bad writer, but I still have
something to say she would be a much more sympathetic figure! But she is
wedded to her style because that is what gives her work its cache-- it
becomes  the exclusive possession of a small group of initiates. 

Katha