> Stannard67 at aol.com wrote:
>
> I'm a little troubled by the snippiness of so many people on this
> list. I posted something in an attempt to help people out and once
> again, rather than receiving an invitational suggestion that I make my
> words more accessible, I got spanked for it. And not even in an
> enjoyable way.
>
What the snipers your post don't realize (or perhaps can't realize) is that much of the writing they _do_ admire is done by writers/scholars who owe a good deal to the "difficult" writers the snipers get so upset with. Behind every triumphantly clear and persuasive work is a huge pile of dull, often wrongheaded, "difficult" writing. You can't have the former without the latter. The complaints at difficult writing resemble someone who loves beefsteak complaining about the acreage devoted to the raising of corn and soybeans.
Carrol
P.S. Stannard67 at aol.com wrote:
> I think you'll find a lot of convergence between decent rhetorical
> criticism and other analysis of ideology.
That might be interesting, but I want to mention that it is oblique to my interest in launching this particular thread. My focus was neither analysis of ideology nor rhetorical analysis as such but consideration of the special problem facing left organizing of _creating_ an audience; thus concerns of "how to persuade" had to be subordinate to creating an audience to be persuaded. Yoshie expresses the same concern, writing " What's the most difficult task that confronts leftists in the United States? To get Americans to realize that they exist." That is the first sentence of an essay to be found at <http://montages.blogspot.comw/2004/09/havent-heard-enough.html>.
P.S.2 Stannard67 at aol.com wrote:
> By "dualism" I meant that postmodernists often criticize people who
> attempt to pin down the "truth" behind the "representation."
That usage of "dualism" seems a bit odd to me. There has been a tendency (predating "postmodernism," whatever that means) among literary critics to use the term in rather eccentric ways. Perhaps that habit leaked into some post-structuralist discourse. Jon's definition (two substances, mind/body, etc.) seems the usage most consistent with most usage of the term.