Sez Ange:
>>i still can't make head or tail of recent conversations on
>>this list on the US business cycle and spending, no matter how hard i tried
>>(and then got easily distracted), because i assume its steeped in the
>>mythic stories of washington commentators and the US treasury. but it's
>>never occured to me to argue that this is the fault of those who talk like
>>this, as if there should be a universal idiom, that it should be mine or
>>defer to mine. wouldn't that be an unpleasant kind of narcissism?
Whilst I'm in no position to pass comment on Spivak, I reckon I am allowed when it comes to Judith Butler and many another. You can get an economics/commerce/finance dictionary (not that I suggest it's necessarily worth the effort) and make sense of what some business wallah is saying (usually enough to know he's not making sense, anyway). Simple translation is all that's needed. You can't do this with a lot of the stuff I come across in the course of my duties. Now, that COULD mean there just ain't the words in this constrained, instrumentalist, patriarchal, racist, classist, eurocentric tongue of ours to express their brilliant subversive thoughts (which'd be weird, 'coz not a few of 'em seem to insist NOTHING can 'happen' outside language), or it could mean they're shit writers (in which case I'm not about to chuck stones from my particular glass enclosure), or it could mean they're shit thinkers (and here I reckon I should be allowed to throw stones, because my remit is merely to be clever enough to read their scribblings, not clever enough to write 'em).
What I can make out of the first quarter of Butler's PLOP is fine - sure, anyone here could have paraphrased it better, the thoughts are standard variations on established critiques, and I see nothing with which to take exception - but if what I understand is all there is, not only does PLOP demand more work on the reader's part than is necessary (on which criterion I shall not throw more than this pebble), but it seems to be trying very hard to imply it's saying more than it is (in which case I'm either not clever enough to read PLOP or some pretentiousness/dishonesty is going on).
Cheers, Rob.