I want to open with something nice so.... In your closing paragraph you state.
On 12/10/06, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>I know you
> agree with that, because you are willing to accept specialized knowledge
> and language in at least some domains. We also agree that it is
> appropriate to assess specialized language in terms of its social
> effects. If a particular form of knowledge mainly exists to "petrify
> democratic education or facilitate the dominance of various ruling
> classes"--in my view, economics is the poster child here!--it deserves
> any ridicule we can heap on it.
I think we can reach (have reached?) some common ground here. I do wish you could agree with me on the general idea of an _ethics of rhetoric_ because it is something I have been thinking about off and on for a while.
But....
>Miles writes: Do you really believe
> anyone writes for the express purpose of obfuscation?
JM: In short yes. Often through-out history.
When ever a priestly class/caste is allied with a centralized state, obfuscation and obscurantism is an explicit part of the exclusivity of the "word". My historical view is that in all class societies, where the division of labor between "intellectual work" and "manual work" is extensive and stable, some forms of obfuscation and obscurantism will take place. Also under such circumstance there will develop ideological justifications of this division of labor, and of course the intellectuals of any society will justify their privileges, along with their alliances with rulers and the ruling class.
We live in a society where everything that can be commodified will be commodified. Intellectuals themselves are a commodity in our society, in one way or another. Lawyers, doctors, middle managers, public relation types, engineers, professors, physicists, etc. are all brain workers and all have developed ways to justify their privileges in our class society. These are not justifications that necessarily implicate any particular individual. (In fact it is possible for an individual to reject her/his justifications of privilege, undermine them, and work for a better society.) But in a commodified society, where intellectuals themselves are commodities, individual intellectuals will be caught in the web of competition with other commodified individuals. Within any given profession or field of intellectual competition, rules and norms, and institutions will develop to "regulate" this competition and assure that some individual gets picked to do the job. These rules and norms and institutions will develop their own peculiar justifications for existence. These institutions will foster ways of speaking and writing, that tend to make their profession or field seem more exclusive more important than they are actually are. In our society there is a tendency on the part of institutions of professionals to view themselves as an exclusive and important secular priesthood. Without insulting lawyers, I think that they have created the model institutions in these processes. I think that this is because, as the Old Man observed, legal ideology is the core of all bourgeois philosophical ideology. It would be surprising under such circumstances if intellectuals in all fields and professions did not try to increase their "worth" as commodities by developing esoteric lexicons and customs, that had very little to do with their actual field of knowledge.
But professions and intellectual fields as a whole also compete against each other, positioning themselves within our society, to increase their worth, not only over and against manual labor but against the other fields of intellectual workers. In truth the condition of the old fashion intellectual -- the kind that studies Plato and Plutarch, philosophy and rhetoric, -- is very precarious in our society. Knowledge of "science" is "valued" at a greater price than knowledge of Cicero. In these conditions it would be quite surprising if the old fashion intellectual didn't attempt to turn his knowledge into a valuable form of arcana -- sometimes imitating science and sometimes imitating theology. In the midst of the commodified intellectual and the push for more and more esoteric/exclusive knowledge, intellectual star systems of various kinds push this way of justification and self-promotion over the edge.
France in the years 1945-1980 was a special case. It was a highly centralized and very unique intellectual culture. Also it was possible in such a culture for an intellectual to be promoted in the same way as a popular celebrity in the U.S. The competition was fierce, but the prize was in effect world-wide fame among all intellectuals. From this historical distance, given such institutions, given the usual justifications for the dominance of intellectual labor, given the competition between commodified intellectuals, and in France given the fact that intellectuals could in effect become intellectual "brands" exported through-out the world, I would find it surprising if something weird didn't begin to happen. The weirdness that did happen was the nonsense that has since spread itself across the world.
Is the obfuscation of such intellectuals intentional? Do they engage in it for the express purpose of obfuscation? My answer to your question is yes, no, maybe. It seems to me that Lacan (and this is just my guess from reading a lot about him and by him in the last 30 years) from at least 1965 on deliberately obfuscated. He did so because he was a person who quite early caught on to how the intellectual institutions of France worked. He manipulated the system quite cynically and became the intellectuals high priest, developing around him a cult of personality. This kind of cynicism is rare. It takes a special kind of person to be a good con artist. Most people convince themselves that their own games are important and necessary. This kind of self-deception is part of the process of ideology after all.
> Miles writes: And more
> importantly: how could you ever verify your own imputations about the
> writer's motives?
JM: (1) It is not about the intellectuals or writer's motive, it is about how knowledge and information function in society. (2) It is not about motive it is about how institutions are constructed to legitimate society and exclude groups of people from the discussion. Some local, national, and global institutions are constructed around obscurity and obscurantism. Many religious institutions are so constructed and many secular institutions are constructed on the model of the obscurantism of religious institutions. And (3) because intellectuals in the course of history have often said that they wish to exclude their knowledge from the great unwashed and then they actually produce and reproduce institutions in such a way that the great unwashed actually are excluded.
Do you believe that people who were burned at the stake for using the vernacular language were put there because the intellectuals who sought to protect the mob from unorthodox thoughts were in fact not in favor of obfuscating and obscuring? Do you think that battles among intellectuals in the late 19th century about whether it was proper to teach Darwin to the masses, whether it was dangerous, or might lead to immorality, no matter what the truth of the matter of evolution, had nothing to do with keeping a technical language secure for intellectuals? Do you think the fight by and for the working classes for public and free education for all, and the content of that education was not about intellectuals guarding their privileges? Do you think that the battle about whether young women should be taught math, science, and literature instead of the "homemaking arts" wasn't about excluding women from learning the technical language of male intellectuals? Do you think that the battle over whether the working classes should only learn "trades" or whether they should have an opportunity to learn physics, biology, literature, etc. was not about keeping the "intellectual" arts exclusive? Intellectuals and priests said it was when they talked among themselves so why should we think otherwise.
> Miles writes: Should everyone--including the author--just accept
> Jerry's imputation that "author X is trying to communicate, and author Y
> is trying to obfuscate"? You're assuming all right-thinking people will
> share your opinions about a text; I find that wildly implausible.
JM: No I don't believe that people should accept what I say. I believe that people have the responsibility I wrote about above. 'Not only do you have to take into account your audience, when "framing" your message, you also have to ask: "Why do you have the audience you have in the first place? What interests are you serving when you write this or that? What and whose interests does your audience serve? How was your audience constructed in the first place? Why are you privileged to stand on this podium, to have this publication publish your work, to have this book distributed?"'
If you accept the responsibility surrounding what I am calling _an ethics of rhetoric_ then you will take these questions and/or many other questions that people more aware than myself may articulate In some cases you may not want to change who you write for and how and why you write. I am quite happy that E. P. Thompson has educated me on Blake and other romantics, even though he has written these books for a small audience. But I also note that he knew he could use his privilege for other kinds of interventions, with other audiences.
>Miles writes: For instance, earlier in the thread, bitch mentioned someone who
> considered Chomsky an elite academic who is difficult to read. You
> don't agree. Why should your assessment of Chomsky carry more weight?
JM: Well, my assessments don't (and shouldn't) carry more weight than anyone else's assessments on these subjects. Why should they? The point is to make a rational argument and discuss the issues in such a way as to bring light, or at least make the outline of shadow more distinct. What is your point?
Chomsky himself when asked about "intellectuals" who do the best work has pointed to people like the murdered Jesuit priests in El Salvador.
For myself, I would say that some of the most important intellectuals I have met lived in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Very few of us will ever know about them. Fred Hampton had the potential of becoming this kind of intellectual. Septima Clark was this kind of intellectual. So was Myles Horton. Bob Moses is currently this kind of intellectual. These intellectuals in my estimation are some of the most important intellectuals of the last century. I could add many others but most of them are not even on the list of "high-powered" stars. I would trade in practically all of the deconstructionists in the world for one more Septima Clark or Myles Horton. They did important intellectual work and important educational work. That's only my judgment but in most accounts of intellectuals such people are not even mentioned, if they are known at all.
So if you ask Chomsky he would largely agree with an assessment that says he is an academic in an elitist position, thrown into prominence for elitist reasons, subject to a star system of hierarchy that he considers despicable. I think he tries his best to work against these forces. So should we all.
(Note: I say I would trade in "practically all of the deconstructions in the world" and not "all". Why? Because I think the intellectual tendency should exist but simply should not take up too much labor time. I am quite happy that there are a small group of people making acrostics and crossword puzzles for the rest of us. If deconstruction (just as a single example) was looked on not as a way to understand "texts" but simply as a way to turn what we read into intellectual acrostics, and was promoted as such, who could take issue with it. I play chess. You play deconstruction of texts. But if most of pomo lit crit was approached in this manner it would lose its ideological function, as sketched above. )
>Miles writes: If we did a survey of adults in the U. S., had them
read some Chomsky,
> and the majority claimed that he was an obscure intellectual elitist,
> would you denounce his work? If so, I admire your logical consistency,
> but the consequence would be the further stigmatization and
> marginalization of interesting political writing. If not, your argument
> is logically incoherent.
JM: What does it matter, an opinion survey? Why do you think the consistency of my position depends on on general agreement of an opinion survey or some such like thing? I don't understand. Perhaps this is somehow derived from your idea of "language communities"?
Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose a higher case than an opinion survey . Let us suppose we can assume knowledge of a Rousseau-like pseudo-Marxist "general (proletarian) will" (GPW). What if in the opinion of this GPW Chomsky is considered an obscure intellectual. Why would this matter? I am not talking about opinion, but actual attempts to talk to people in a way that promotes democracy and I claim that one way for those of us who are privileged to do this is to keep in mind what I am calling an _ethics of rhetoric_. Sometimes an individual will fail, And sometimes an individual who sets herself this project will succeed and sometimes she will fail. The failure of any single project may occur for various reasons having to do with lack of skill, repression by the rulers, censorship by the intellectual guardians of official truth, or simply because she is living in bad times. It is also possible that the people who you wish to speak to do want to hear you and are listening to something else. Or you may simply be wrong.
As for Chomsky he is a member of an intellectual elite, and freely admits that he is privileged. So are many of us on this list. Personally, I wouldn't mind being a member of an intellectual elite, though currently I am quite declasse, and a step from being lumpen.
The point is what do you do with your privilege? Do you only talk to other people who are privileged? Do you talk in a rhetoric that only a very few other privileged people will understand? Do you do this only when talking about specialized topics such as set theory and QM or do you do so all the time? Do you invent a specialized lexicon for topics that can be explained without such a lexicon?