European Unions

[Kelley Walker]

At 01:44 PM 4/6/01 -0400, Dennis wrote:
> > Yeah, you hear academics quoting Trotsky on working class militancy
> > and consciousness all the time! I remember back in grad school, you
> > heard folks in the English department lounge talking about it all the
> > time. People laughed out loud when one student said he was doing a
> > diss on Tennyson's letters. He was roundly denounced as a complicit
> > tool of the aestheticizing bourgeoisie.
> >
> > Doug
>
>I wasn't referring to your grad school, Doug. I was commenting on those here
>who, behind academy gates, plan the next step in workers' control of
>production -- preferably without consulting the workers themselves. Call me
>a boxhead, but some of the jargon on this list is beyond comprehension. Just
>who do these "radicals" think they're reaching?
>
>DP

look. i've written for academia and for the public. in fact, i've worked on 
academic projects that were explicitly about making connections b/t the 
wider public and academic research.  you simply write for different 
audiences. this is LBO (300 or so damn smart, literate people) and, often, 
I'm writing to those who know the jargon. i don't care whether you get it 
or not. i presume that if you want to, you can learn how just like i 
did--and on my own, not thru school. i don't get a lot of the jargon used 
in the thread on how marx defined surplus value and i sure don't dig 
rational choice economics and the research papers doug occasionally posts 
here.  but i figure that i have three choices: 1. i can go out and learn 
what they mean. 2. i can ask them or 3. i can do other things and not care 
very much.  but the two options i don't have (or don't think i should have) 
are. 1. to assume i'm a boxhead or 2. think that the people using that 
language are deliberately trying to obfuscate (or should i have used 
"muddied up") the language so that others can't understand.

kelley