There might be a different reason for thinking Jerry M is right. Someone coming out of the background of training in the works of Feynman and Wheeler will have the appropriate context to talk sense about physics, although it may be Greek to the innumerate. Likewise if you cut your teeth on Connor and Kagan (yes, that neo-con jerkoff is a top-flight Thucycides scholar) and Ober, you will have the context to say useful things about Thucydides that background in Butler, Derrida, and DeMan will not give you. Etc. This sort of training provides the context that makes sense of the "Bring me nails" or "Bring me ten pictures I like" examples put forward by Carrol. Frequently the writing one does with this background will not be accessible to the ordinary reader of, say, the New York Review of Books, It may be highly technical and obscure to someone without the right background and training.
As a lawyer I run into this all the time. Arguing a case, I say, plaintiff has no standing, or this case must be dismissed because discretionary administrative nonenforcement is nonreviewable, I don't have to explain to the court what that means, we all went to law school. I may have to provide a cite, in fact I would, but that would not help the uninitiated grasp the point, for which you'd need a tedious explanation (or a law degree).
Also within the law. Gave a talk on a method of assigning lead class counsel and determining court-approved attorneys' fees (if you were up on class action you'd know that expression was redundant) to my law school as a job talk -- which I tried to make as a clear and interesting and intelligible to an audience of a widely disparate range of lawyers/law professors as I could, but even then the questions revealed that lack of background was a problem for people who don't do civ pro and class actions in particular. A very smart criminalist had never heard of Milberg Weiss, the leading plaintiffs' securities class action firm in the biz (despite the fact that they've just been indicted for all sorts bad behavior). Another colleague commented to me afterward that a colleague had commented to _her_ that my proposal would mean a lot more money for the plaintiff class (also a redundant term) if I was right -- which was the point of my talk that I hit with a sledgehammer.
So, it's nice to write clearly enough so people can understand you. But "people" is contextual. If "people" is my law faculty or the court of appeals, I talk one way. If the readers of the New York Review, I talk another. If the members of LBO, I talk a third. If my kids, a fourth. "Clear," then, is not an unambiguous term.
Two final points. Virtual amateurs or autodidacts like Foucault may lack scholarly chops in, e.g., ancient history, but may bring fresh perspectives and new questions that the professionally trained don't think of. I think this is especially true of Foucault -- I wouldn't rely on his research, but I am inspired by his questions. And some writers, and I'd include Butler, Derrida, Baudriallard, and Heidegger in that lot, as well as Wilfrid Sellars -- are just obscurantists whether through intent or incapacity. I mean obscurantists whatever background you have.
--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> >
> > I began at the U of C studying physics. Do you
> think that I
> > "grudgingly admit" that technical language is
> necessary in this area.
> > Or that someone engaged in studying Thucydides and
> his relation to the
> > Athenian _demos_ must write differently than
> someone engaged in
> > studying Shelley and his relation to radical
> politics? But a person
> > who _tries_ to write like Josiah Ober will be
> better at explaining the
> > Athenian polis than a person who aims to write
> like Foucault will ever
> > be. A person who _tries_ to write like E. P.
> Thompson or Richard
> > Holmes will be better at explaining Shelley or
> Blake than a person who
> > _tries_ to write like Derrida. This is apart from
> whatever evaluation
> > I have of the _world view_ of Ober, Thompson,
> Derrida, or Foucault.
> > And it is also apart from what ever evaluation I
> have about the talent
> > of the individual person or whether the person is
> successful or not at
> > what she aims at, when she tries to write one way
> or another.
> >
> I have to say that this view of language use is
> strange to me. The
> assumption is that the reading audience of any text
> is the entire human
> species (or at least the literate individuals who
> speak a given
> language), and if something isn't clear to the
> "average" person, then
> it's obscurantist. This is unrealistic depiction of
> actual, everyday
> language use. We speak a certain way in a certain
> context because we
> "know" that's enough, even though someone not
> familiar with the context
> couldn't make sense of it. --If a framer at a
> construction site asks
> his bud, "Bring me some more nails", the bud knows
> exactly what to
> bring. If you strip the sentence from its social
> context, it's
> ambiguous: what kind of nails? Roofing?
> Double-headed? False plastic?
>
> This is what I think Carrol was getting at with this
> "Bring me something
> I like" example: that sentence is in fact perfectly
> understandable and
> clear language in certain social contexts; in
> others, it's hopelessly
> muddled (say, a graphic designer trying to create a
> logo for a client
> she knows nothing about). Note that this is exactly
> the same with any
> of your examples above: among students of the social
> history of
> sexuality, Foucault's work is meaningful and
> significant. If you
> haven't participated in that academic discussion,
> his claims will seem
> like pointless jargon.
>
> Miles
>
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>
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