carrol RAWKS!
At 12:53 PM 12/6/2006, Carrol Cox wrote:
>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
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