james at communistbanker.com wrote:
>
> Now I'm embarassed to have agreed with your previous post. I also
> crave clarity and power, but lots of important and rewarding writing
> is not clear and powerful. Unfortunately for us, some powerful
> thinkers are less than powerful writers. Unfortunately for you, you'll
> never know if you refuse anything that's unclear.
>
> How can you know what Derrida's 'supposed' greatness lies in if you
> don't read it? And whilst Alain de Botton's prose might be clear -
> even powerful - it's also vacuous and moronic. You'd realise that if
> you engaged with some of his sources, which are more difficult than
> de Botton gives credit for, but also much more rewarding than his
> patronising therapeutic interpretation.
>
Since I've only read one or two of his writings, I have no opinion on Derrida itself, but I agree with James that there is no worse standard conceivable than "clarity" for judging a thinker. And obviously judgments of Derrida by those who have not read or (at least partly) understood him are simply irrelevant. On clarity, Pound made a wonderful observation about 80 years ago. Consider the two sentences:
Buy me one pound of ten-penny nails.
Buy me a painting I like.
Actually, in order to make the second sentence "clear" one would have to write 10 pages or more of pretty complicated prose. And complaints about the complexity of the result would in fact be arguments that certain subjects should not be discussed because (my oh my) discussing them results in prose that is hard to read.
In fact, I've always suspected that most complaints about "difficult" texts are actually complaints about the subject matter. Also, there are incredibly difficult texts to understand in which the difficulty clearly has nothing to do with the style. Over the last couple of weeks I've been reading Wordsworth's _Prelude_ in the 1805 text. I read and reread the 1850 text some decades ago, and while I have no memory of how I responded to the poem then, it certainly did not capture any lasting attention. This time it's exciting me, but I'm also finding it quite difficult, difficulty simply not exlicable by any whinings about the style.
Beyond the fact that some subject matter can't be handled (even by the best writer) in a "clear" manner, _also_, bad writing (as opposed to necessarily difficult writing) is not an indication of poor thinking. (The teaching of writing for a hundred years has been a crime against humanity in so far as it has implied that bad writing equals bad thinking.)
On Butler's piece that Doug forwarded. As someone pointed out, a memorial has no obligation to explain the topic to those who aren't interested in the topic to begin with, so there can't be any complaint about Butler herself.
But Doug fwd it to the list with some silly sneer to the effect, "Take that, you anti-theorists." But as usual Doug refuses to specify any particular interlocutor but simply makes up some ghillie or ghostie to cast his sneers at.
Therefore on this list it should be regarded as _Doug's_, not _Butler's_, account of Derrida, and as Doug's it is a judgment he should defend. I suspect though that he has never read Derrida himself, however, so he might be put to it to say anthing substantial one way or another.
Carrol