> sleek Harrods-frocked lefties<
and here was i rather enjoying jim's vision of spivak as a bag lady... and for some reason i don't think butler would don a frock from harrods either.
> 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).<
it's not the words or sentences i have trouble with in certain conversations on economics; it's the conceptual framework. i'm comfortable with a discussion of economics from a perspective of a critique of economics much more than i'm able to wander comfortably through the discussion when the concepts are used without the kind of translation that makes sense to me at quite specific junctures in the argument. it might just be that my eyes glaze over and my brain goes on strike -- a kind of resistance that has little to do with how easy to learn or not such an idiom is. and that, me thinks, is what happens across the board and gets confused as inherent 'impenetrability'.
i don't think finding something 'impenetrable' says i'm stupid or that the writer can't write properly. we have to grant that communication is often impossible for reasons which are in no way sinister or a judgement on those communicating or wanting to.
> Simple translation is all that's needed.<
or translation into an idiom i understand? that's not a question of simplicity but of the conceptual hooks that i might already have versus those being used.
> 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)<
ummm.. this would be why the language is so tortured, right? (do spivak or butler insist that nothing _happens_ outside language, or do they argue that nothing is conceptualised other than _through_ language? -- thought you'd slip that by, huh?) but to the specific issue and an anecdotal: when i write, the thing which always seems to bother me is what do i spend time explaining and in particular arguing for and what don't i have to? and the difference between the two is deciding what the reader will (or not) regard as self-evident. sometimes, not all the time i grant you, but sometimes, it's quite important to challenge the self-evidence of what might appear to be the most self-evident of things, to get the reader to work hard in order to make the organisation of that established self-evidence a matter of overt construction rather than assumption.
> or it could mean they're shit writers<
i'd like to be more elegant myself; but i think of cucumber sandwiches and iced tea, and i go easy on my own laboured syntax.
> or it could mean they're shit thinkers<
could be.
[butler's _ploop_] 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).<
pretentiousness is something all theorists do. even the most 'clear' writers are pretentious in their own way. but on butler, it could also be that there are debates being referenced in there that you or i haven't been privy to or are as concerned with or find irrelevant or (here's the punch-line) regard as self-evidently concluded. can we read spivak fully without having some knowledge of the debates over subaltern history in india? can we read butler without having some knowledge of the debates in queer politics and queer theory? we could try, but it might not make a lot of sense to us why this or that issue was being worked over with a fine toothed comb, would it? and that's not simply a question of academic training (which is after all the presumption of a lot of theorising, and spivak hardly deserves to be singled out for this one), but of what is or isn't regarded as the terrain of argument. both for spivak and butler, the kinds of things they're interested in hardly have a central place in the academy, do they? to make them bear the burden of academicism seems a little off in that context. maybe their target is the academy? it certainly seems to be for spivak, edward said, others, and for reasons which have to do with these concerns not being central.
ps. what does 'wallah' mean? i can't find it in my copy of the macquarie aust-speak handbook. it makes me think of pith helmets and gin and tonics, but beyond that...
Angela _________