>Unlike Butler or Derrida, Foucault writes plain,
>clear, dull, workmanlike prose. He's not a literary
>master like Wilson or Russell (the latter a Nobel
>Prize Winner for Literature), but few are, so talking
>of the "the style" of literary masters is sort of
>unfair. But Foucault is not unnecessarily obscure,
>jargonistic, etc. Zizek is often lucid and sparkling,
>but he can lapse into Lacanspeak, and then he loses
>me.
>
>
>
I have to agree with Justin here; I don't know why Foucault gets lumped
in with Derrida/Lacan/Baudrilliard/et al. At least in the English
translation, Foucault's stuff is pretty straightforward. --Perhaps we
just want to identify all French intellectuals as academic poseurs?
That said, I want to join Carrol in a rejection of the demand for "clear writing". The clarity of a text is not a product of the text; rather, clarity is a product of people in a given social context who share the same background of knowledge and interest and then use the text in their ongoing interactions. Thus a computer programming text is not clear to me at all, but it could be a clear text in the culture of computer programmers. A chess book using algebraic notation may be a fascinating topic of discussion for me and ravi (/Life and games of M. Tal /rocks!), but it's just gibberish to people who don't participate in the chess culture. In sum: you can't say a text is "unnecessarily obscure" until you participate meaningfully in the culture that created it.
Miles