[lbo-talk] RE: The postmodern prince

[Jon Johanning]

On Monday, December 1, 2003, at 01:13  AM, Jacob Conrad wrote:

> One thing I noticed, which seems pretty obvious
> now but was a revelation at the time, is that many people simply don't
> like to read.  They're not necessarily dumb, but reading isn't their
> preferred way of acquiring information.

That certainly seems to be the case with political information these 
days. It looks as though a lot of people don't even read newspapers, 
except perhaps the sports pages. They get their political information 
from talk shows and TV, which is why getting more left talk show hosts 
and at least one cable channel going is very important.

For those who do still read (and there are enough readers sympathetic 
to the left to put books by the likes of Moore, Franken, and Conaston 
at the top of the best seller lists at least now and then), I certainly 
agree with Kelley that it's not a good idea to patronize them. But I 
doubt that the kind of academic language used these days by most 
political theorists will make any sense at all to the average American 
who still bothers to read. It's an in-group language seemingly designed 
to keep the unwashed multitudes out. Surely leftists can write in a 
non-patronizing but understandable way. It doesn't mean "dumbing down" 
what you say, just some ruthless editing and rewriting to make sure 
that you are talking your readers' language.

Too much leftist writing is just spewed out on the page (or the 
monitor), with no effort made to rewrite and polish it, it seems to me. 
Also, I suspect that much of the horrible English in this genre comes 
from very inexpert, amateur translations from French, German, Russian, 
etc., by people who think that being able to read a foreign language 
passably well qualifies them to translate it. Leftists whose only 
language is English read so many of these poor translations that they 
get used to this stuff and lose their sense of what real English is.

Comparing academic leftist jargon with the language of a physics 
textbook, as Miles does, is beside the point. Scientists aren't 
deliberately writing in an obscure dialect -- they're using technical 
terms that are required by their subject matter. Once you learn what 
the terms mean, their language is quite clear and direct. But words 
like "praxis," "resingularization," and "valorize" (a particular horror 
to me) are not necessary to political theory in the way that "quarks" 
and "quantum" are in physics, it seems to me. They're just obstacles to 
understanding.

As much as many of us disagree with Lenin's politics, I think we have 
to agree that it was fortunate for him that the Tsarist educational 
authorities kicked him out of the university and he turned to hanging 
out with the workers in St. Petersburg. Otherwise he might have ended 
up as a distinguished professor of the law, instead of learning how to 
speak to the workers' concerns in a language they could understand.

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
__________________________________
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You 
should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest 
and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax