JM: I am not quite sure if you are serious here.
There is a difference between criticizing obscure writing and using state or party power to suppress obscurantism.
I am for the freedom to be obscure. The freedom to be obscure is a form of freedom speech. The freedom to obscurantism is also part of the freedom to practice your religion. As for Zinoviev he engaged in his own forms of obscurantism and I am sure if you look at any given piece of his writing from the period of the 1920s you can see how he covers up. If it was the official party line to suppress Lukacs' writings then he should have quit the party.
You seem very confused in this case. Sensing a violation of a territorial imperative you come to the defense of the professorial class and those that will be judged by them.
But in the world of history it was those who insisted upon writing clearly and in a language that others could understand who were the ones who were persecuted. So you ask me if I would be on the side of Lukacs or Zinoviev as if that was some kind of clincher. I ask you how and why did you import the problem of freedom of speech and academic freedom into a debate about whether it is better to try to write clearly so that others can judge your work or if it is better to hide your thoughts beneath mostly meaningless and obscure prose. So why not just write in vulgar Church Latin?
A question analogous to your Zinoviev v. Lukacs question I could ask you is: In the battle between Galileo and the Church authorities... or John Hus and the Church authorities ... which side would you take? Do you see that my question is as unfair to ask you as your question was unfair to ask me? Carrol, resorting to rhetorical overkill will not bring light to the issue.
Carrol wrote: 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.
JM: As a writing exercise I have done this many times, with both Derrida and Zizek. It was time consuming but moderately enlightening. Most of what they said could either be discarded outright or reduced to truism. I was considering doing this with the Zizek quote provided by Doug. Maybe I will yet.
But what I have noticed is that this test is best performed as an exercise and experience. As a person who used to work as an editor I have performed the same kind of test on many kinds of prose. I have also assigned this test to others. My suggestion is that you take the Zizek quote provided by Doug and perform the test for yourself. Not to please me but rather because I think that you can prove to yourself my points, that what is obscure about what Zizek is saying is either a truism or nonsense. This is a friendly suggestion Carrol.
You believe that I am professor baiting. Fair enough. I don't think that I am. But if you pay attention to what I wrote you would have realized that I left a lot of opening for the use of technical language and the simple inability to articulate. What is in question is not bad writing but the deliberate obscurantism that has possessed for example the Yale French Studies department. It is a obscurantism that they make their PhD candidates conform to or else they are out. It amazes me how you have turned the problem up-side down. A lot has changed since you were coming up as a professor. In your day you could be drummed out of the academy for many kinds of missteps, some of them having to do with professing radical politics. Today so many philosophy and literature departments I know simply try to replicate themselves and replicate the same kind of writing as the professors of the previous generation. I suppose this is a consistent tendency in all corporate cultures. But an argument for clarity and against obscurantism is not an argument against professors but an argument for young academics, to make it easier for academics to write what can be written without jargon in a way that is jargon free.
Carrol wrote: 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.
JM: Now, it is a simple fact of the political economy of the the academy that bad writing is often rewarded. Publish or perish promotes bad writing, not good teaching, and also promotes the proliferation of "theories." I have helped enough people to write papers to realize this. I have reviewed enough theses to know it.
There is a reason why nobody gets hired in certain academics departments unless they conform to certain "schools", certain ways of writing and thinking. Certain "schools of thinking" develop their own technical language not because the technical language is required for expression, but simply because it is needed for entry. One does not need mind reading to test my thesis. The thesis is simply part of an institutional analysis of the university system. Further it is not even necessarily a matter of the motive of the individual writer. Either you conform to certain way of speaking or acting or writing or you are out of a job. In the context of "The New York Times" Chomksy and Hermann have called this a "filtering mechanism." Sometimes it is conscious and sometimes it becomes second nature. This is not true of all academic fields and departments and it is not true of all bad writing, but climbing the academic hierarchy often promotes obscurity.
Unfortunately this has often been true in the sciences up until the 1980s. The amount of flak and suspicion that both S. J. Gould and Carl Sagan received from their colleagues for "popularizing" science was tremendous. Sagan himself probably had to forgo many honors for his more technical scienctific work (the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus for example) simply because he insisted on also explaining as much as he could in a popular language. The prejudice against "popularizers" in the academy, has nothing to do with the worth of the work of the so called "popularizers" and more to do with academic politics and the maintenance of a stable and exclusive club.
There is no need for truth serum to understand how institutions work.
Carrol wrote: 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.
JM: It is certainly a professional defect to have an imperfect grasp of the subject matter you are studying. It is also a professional defect, if it is the profession you choose, to express your imperfect grasp imperfectly.
I am a democrat and I believe in equality. But I also believe in expertise and excellence. In the arts and sciences elites will and must exist. I am lacking in expertise and excellence in many areas including writing.
But the invention of esoteric expression, not for the sake of the subject, but for the sake of enforcing exclusivity and elitism is a moral defect. Often in our society such esoteric obscurity is a product of a star system and the institutional promotion of the star system. National differences can be seen. This sort of star system and promotion of obscurantism seems to be less prevalent in Italy, for example, than in France and I think that it has much to do with the centralization of French society.
Carrol wrote: 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.
JM: Carrol I am not sure you read what I wrote, so let me qutoe myself: "There are times when obscure prose is not for the sake of obscurantism, or when language is esoteric but not for the sake of exclusivity. When thoughts are being expressed for the first time and the author is trying to work through his/her thinking in public then even though the writing might not make sense, it may help others to entangle and then untangle a knot of meaning. In such a case obscurity has a creative and germinating aspect and may lead to clarity later on and/or the development of a legitimate subject of expertise and technicality. "
Let me add that this can occur not only in a social context but in an individual context. It may be simply part of the learning process. But of Zizek's writings is part of his own personal learning process I wish that we could weed him out of the star system that he so surely exploits.
Carrol: 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.
JM: Carrol, my contention is that many such writers are promoted because they are obscure and use obscure language in the same way that many religions guarded their so called "secrets" behind obscurity. I am not arguing against bad writing, per se. Bad writing is inevitable and bad writing is rarely a sign of anything but inability or inexperience or muddled thought or lack of time or laziness. Take your pick. Some of us stutter or are too shy to become good public speakers. Empathy and sympathy is called for in such cases. A caring audience is appropriate. There are people who have analogous problems when writing and again empathy and sympathy is called for.
But inarticulateness is not obscurantism. I only wish that Zizek, Lacan, and Derrida were inarticulate. Then I could sympathize with them and we would be saved from the confidence game of deconstruction and Lacanian psychoanalysis. You are continually confusing simple bad writing and inevitable clunkiness or clumsiness with obscurantism. Deconstruction and much of post-modernism and many varieties of "marxism" are simply a form of secular obscurantism, performing the same function for intellectuals that other forms of obscurantism did in past ages.
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