Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> I have
> read nothing written by Judith Butler or Derrida or Zizek or Foucault
> that could not be written in the prose style of Edmund Wilson or
> Bertrand Russell, or for that matter the Simone de Beauvoir of "The
> Second Sex." But writing such things in a clear prose style would
> often reveal the absurdity or vacuity or mere everyday truth of the
> thought underneath the writing.
There is a way to test such propositions as this. Take a page or two of Butler and rewrite it. Then write an analysis of the two texts demonstrating that the rewrite does not change the meaning of the original. Even if that exercise were successful, however, it would not establish what is ordinarily claimed to be the _purpose_ of such (hypothetically unnecessary) obscurity. You write, for example: "Much of the technical language and obscure prose used by authors, even those who think of themselves as being on the left, exists to enforce a kind of intellectual exclusivity or to promote academic reputation." Possibly, but I'm not sure how you could demonstrate that these are the motives of the writer, unless you are capable of mind reading or can strap the writer down and administer sodium penatol.
MOREOVER: It is perhaps useful on lbo-talk, where everyone is rabidly "anti-stalinist," to mention that professor-baiting was one of the major weapons wielded by the "stalinists" in establishing stalinist hegemony over the parties of the Third International. Every time you are tempted to sneer at professors or at "academic prose," think of Zinoviev vs. Lukacs. Which side would you have taken in _that_ dispute?
AND FURTHER. In reference to professor baiting. It is not a moral defect to have achieved an imperfect grasp of a difficult subject, nor is it a moral nor an intellectual nor a professional defect to express that (imperfect) grasp imperfectly. In fact, a good deal of 'advance' in human knowledge is grounded in a body of imperfect expression of imperfect understanding. And this, not the deliberate obscurity that so many on this list endlessly belabor, is probably the source of the overwhelming proportion of bad or obscure ("unnecessarily obscure") writing produced by intellectuals.
AND FURTHER YET: Practically all of those infamous "bad" writers on the left are in fact writing as well, as clearly, as they are capabable of writing in the time they have to do it in. (And, I would add, probably with as much humor as they can manage. Only fools think it is _easy_ to write with humor, and on the whole I think it is only fools who charge left writers with lacking humor.) The "best and the brightest" are too busy killing off a couple million vietnamese, of arranging the deaths of some 30 million through IMF sanctions, of being paid well by the WSJ, or of writing ad copy for Toyota to become left organizers and writers. Very few of that best and brightest ever end up on the left at all. It doesn't pay well enough.
Carrol