> That's why there's poetry. (Not a joke.)
>
> Joanna
True.
Also Doug should compare Marx's published writing with Butler's. Even in the most difficult portions of Capital I could read it with enjoyment at age 14. Picking up Butler for the first time was like trying to translate a foreign language where the syntax is unknown to me. There are few sentences that go by that I don't have to translate into "ordinary language" in order to understand what she is saying.
I question what her notions of "ordinary language" and "received grammar" mean. The first phrase does have a philosophical connotation, but I doubt that she is referring to Ryle, Peter Strawson, Austin, etc. As far as I know Butler doesn't actually offer a critique of ordinary language or try to outline what she means by it. The phrase "received grammar" is an example of Butler's confusion on these issues. It is the kind of confusion involved in the fetishism of language described by Harpham in "Language Alone."
Marx justifies his method. I think he does a good job in explaining why Capital is difficult in the beginning. He justifies or tries to justify why he needs to invent a special language. Marx does not invent a special academic syntax as Butler does. He tries to state what a new way of explaining commodities in capitalism would look like, for example, but does not do so in language that is practically unreadable. I don't think that the comparison between Marx and Butler as far as difficulty of language is at all appropriate.
(N.B. Capital is also beautifully written, by the way, and this can be a problem of interpretation in-itself. The dense paraphrase and literary references to Shakepeare, Dante, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and German and Romantic poetry ask for a non-scientific interpretation beyond the theoretical proposals at hand. The literary references are thicker in the "difficult" first part than elsewhere in Volume 1. And some of the most beautiful passages about the human species are also in the first part of volume 1.)
The comparison between Butler and certain kinds of philosophers may be more appropriate. Kant and Hegel are both near impossible to read at times (not in their short articles but certainly in "The Critique of Pure Reason" and "The Science of Logic.") This is possible but nobody has actually made the argument, except for a brief quote that her language is appropriate to her subject. I think that to the extent that Kant and Hegel succeeded in their projects (success is always partial, and failure is the rule in such attempts) the language was appropriate. I can make the argument for Kant, especially in relation to Hume and Newton, but what argument is their for Butler not using something closer to "ordinary language"? Why isn't the "ordinary language" of Robert Wood's statement of one part of Butler's thesis a standard? What is wrong or "unsubtle about Robert's statement which I myself find a good translation?
But more than anything else, in the quote above given by Dennis, Butler assumes what she should argue. There is an assumption that her subject (her discipline?) needs extra-ordinary language and something beyond our everyday grammar. That is an argument in-itself. I don't think it is true.
Jerry
>
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>
> >
> > "It's not that I'm in favor of difficulty for
> > difficulty's sake; it's that I think there is a
> > lot in ordinary language and in received grammar
> > that constrains our thinking – indeed, about what
> > a person is, what a subject is, what sexuality
> > is, what politics can be – and that I'm not sure
> > we're going to be able to struggle effectively
> > against those constrains or work within them in a
> > productive way unless we see the ways in which
> > grammar is both producing and constraining our sense of what the world
> is."
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
> ___________________________________
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/