And Another
Want more? Want more bad writing combined with bad thinking? Right then.
This is from a review by Azfar Hussain of Dis/locating Cultures/Identitites, Traditions, and Third World Feminism by Uma Narayan.
Narayan’s preoccupations with the problematics of the representations of sati in Western feminist discourse indeed remain intimately connected to other representationalist discursive areas, namely dowry-murders in India and domestic violence-murders in the United States — issues that she takes up in the third chapter of her book. Narayan takes a hard, critical look at the ways in which dowry-murders in India are framed, focused, and even formulated in US academic feminist discourse, while pointing up the dangerous problems kept alive by Western culturalist epistemological approaches to Third-World subjects, identities, traditions, and cultures. She argues that while crossing “borders” in the age of globalization, images, narratives, and the entire chain of events pertaining to the Third World lose their national and historical differentia specifica under the homogenizing epistemic logic of some readily available connection-making apparatuses. As Narayan further argues, such apparatuses — informational, ideological, and mediatic as they are — continue to provide visibility to dowry-murders in India and relative invisibility to domestic-violence murders in the US, thereby serving the hegemonic.
Thereby serving the hegemonic, you see. Perhaps if Hussain had said what he says more clearly, he would have been too embarrassed to say it – which is one use of jargon: it makes it easier to say absurd things. But then one has to wonder why people want to say absurd things. Why do Hussain and Narayan want to argue that Western feminists should not ‘frame, focus and formulate’ dowry-murders in such a way that they are made more visible? Why do they want to summon all this portentous suspicion about the whole thing? Isn’t there enough real oppression and racism and colonialism in the world, without going to all this trouble to translate moral or humanitarian attention into something that ‘serves the hegemonic’?
Just a bit more, by way of edification and entertainment.
Such a self-critical interrogation begins to complicate the very question of identity itself in ways in which the continuing “colonialist” process of constructing “Third-World” identity and also even the practice of conjuring the ghost of authenticity haunting that very identity (as exemplified in various brands of counterproductive, essentialist identity-politics these days) are all brought into productive crises. For Narayan, indeed, the question of identity continues to constitute a predominant concern throughout the book. And her insistence on historicizing and contextualizing identity and difference within the deeply specific national contexts — instead of just celebrating or, worse, fetishizing them — seems right on the mark. According to her, the fetishization of difference and identity only renders them vulnerable to ongoing hegemonic appropriations in the metropolis.
Oh, those ongoing hegemonic appropriations in the metropolis. Don’t you just hate that? You know, you can’t get a cab, and the restaurants are all booked, and everything is so expensive, and then on top of all that – ongoing hegemonic appropriations! It’s unbearable!
Two things: 1) you’re not being fair to the, admittedly, jargon-laden passages you quote. They have to be read both within their entire context and the context of the scholarly debates they refer to in order to be understood. And 2) this stuff is not, despite what you may think, representative of literary theory. Try ELH, Style, or American Literary History.
Two things Chun.
“and the context of the scholarly debates they refer to in order to be understood.”
Nonsense. I’ve done all this. Spent too many bloody years doing it. And lectured on this stuff to hundreds of people. The scholarly debates you refer to are full of the same kind of nonsensical ramblings.
” representative of literary theory.”
It’s representative of a certain kind of literary theory. The kind of literary theory that B&W was set up (in part) to oppose.
Why do you insist on defending the indefensible? Is it a graduate student thing?
Two more things Chun.
One, as I said, the passages I quoted are perfectly representative of the context you say I’m not being fair to. As I said – the rest of it is exactly like that. Simpy more of the same, for 38 and 35 pages respectively.
Two, the passages I quote are perfectly understandable. Not understanding is not the problem. The problem is that they’re not worth understanding.
Barney, some nice brandy in a little warm milk might help with that.
So in other words, the problem isn’t the jargon, it’s your patience; you don’t have it in you to keep up the effort necessary to write and understand a specific terminology any more, and want to resort to something simpler because it’s less work.
I have no problem whatsoever with the notion of making theory accessible to those who want to find out about it. But there’s a time and place for that. Nobody insists that scientific papers be written in the style of a “Dummies” book, and essays on theories written for theoreticians and theoretical analysis shouldn’t have to conform to the lowest common denominator of comprehensibility either.
Why are we supposed to think that scientific papers and ‘theory’ of this sort must be written in difficult prose. It just gets in the way of the meaning of the piece – unless of course that’s the point of writing in that style. This, I think, is OB’s point.
I’m a late grad student applied mathematician; this year I have been preparing my first paper with my advisor. The main change between first draft and second draft was to make all of the sentences much shorter and remove all of the commas. There’s plenty of technical jargon in that paper but there’s no point in making it worse than it must be: compare
A flux formulation does not lend itself readily to modification for particles that travel across multiple faces in a single time step.
with
A flux formulation is not easy to generalize for particles that travel through multiple faces in a single time step.
and that’s a relatively minor change.
In the passage Hussain has “hard, critical”, “framed, focused, and even formulated,”, “subjects, identities, traditions, and cultures,”, “globalization, images, narratives, and the entire chain of events.”, “informational, ideological, and mediatic”. Oy, that’s a lot of serialization for just one paragraph.
The rest of the passage is one big conjunction junction without all that much function.
That is exactly my point, Ben, thank you. I’m not (obviously!) quarreling with necessary complexity or technical language, I’m quarreling with the kind that’s unnecessary and furthermore all too obviously simply there to impress. It’s about jargon for its own sake as opposed to jargon that’s needed or useful because there simply is no other way to say what needs to be said.
And surely it is all too apparent which category the examples I gave fall into. No amount of talk about ‘theories written for theoreticians and theoretical analysis’ can draw a veil over that painful fact – in fact such talk only reveals yet again what is going on. Would-be ‘theoreticians’ are dressing up some under-nourished ideas in borrowed robes.
Yes. The ideas in these passages are comprehensible, and I think they are true enough, if a little hair-splittingly preciously over-nuanced.
OB is right — the problem here is much, much more basic. Passive voice. Sentence length. Too many layers of “of.” Break up those sentences. Make them simple, active, short. Then the ideas will be naked to the world, to be judged on their merits not their wooly, fluffy clothing.
The SIMPLEST sentence in the last passage is this:
For Narayan, indeed, the question of identity continues to constitute a predominant concern throughout the book.
Good gracious, how hard is it to write it simply?
Narayan concerns herself mainly with the question of identity.
or better,
Narayan studies identity.
Well, yes, but if you don’t put in all those “academic emergence of an antiracist knowledge project”s and “de-essentialize the racially minoritized subject”s then you only have about two paragraphs instead of a lot of pages. I used to pad my term papers the same way – plenty of “indeed” and “it could be said that”.
Most recent 3 papers I could get hold of from JSTOR’s language and literature collection searching ‘literary theory’, a paragraph from the middle of each:
“As Werner Hamacher demonstrates, however, this saying is also a performative promise. The linen promises its possession of value and its exchangeability with the coat. This promise is embodied in the speaking appearance of the linen as value. It promises something that we would not otherwise have known or it brings us good news not otherwise available, namely that the commodity system will work, that there is value, Wert. Like all sublime revelations, it also makes a messianic promise: I promise you I have value and my value is manifested in the appearance of a coat, thereby guaranteeing my exchangeability with the coat. A promise, to be a promise, must be capable of not being kept. In that sense it may possibly not be a “felicitous” promise in the Austinian sense of felicity. A promise is not really a promise until it is fulfilled. It binds the future. It is only completely itself in the future. That fulfillment, however, may not happen, in which case the promise would not really be a promise. This applies to the promise the linen makes, to the general promise global capitalism makes these days of peace and prosperity for all, to the promise Jesus makes in Revelation that he will come quickly, to the promise Marx finds within capitalism of its self-destruction through its internal contradictions, and to the promise Marx makes of the inevitable coming of the Marxist millenium. All of these promises are subject to the general aporia of the promise as a form of speech act.”
” What, finally, is the nature of the test? Does it have an essence? Is it pure relationality? How does it participate in Nietzsche’s great destabilizations or prompt the nihilistic slide of values? Why is today our sense of security—whether or not we are prepared to admit this—based on testability? We want everyone and everything tested (I am not unaware of the sinister resonance of this observation. But since when has a desire signaled by humanity not been pulled by a sinister undertow?) Testing, which our Daseins encounter every day in the multiplicity of forms—ranging from IQ to cosmetics, engines, stress, and arms testing 1-2-3- broadcast systems, not to mention testing your love, testing your friendship, testing my patience, in a word, testing the brakes—was located by Nietzsche mainly in the eternal joy of becoming. Becoming involves the affirmation of passing away and destroying—the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy. In the first place, testing marks an ever new relation among forces. Ceasing to raise to infinity or finitude, or to monitor time according to the pulse of German Idealism, it imposes the course of unlimited finiteness. This is the temporality we now commonly associate with third-generation machines, cybernetics, and information technology. In a way, technology ensures its evolving perpetuation by quietly [End Page 664] positing as its sole purpose an infinite series of testing events severed from any empirical function. Thus an elliptical circuit has been established between testing and the real: a circuit so radically installed—it is irreversible—cancels the essential difference between the test and what was assumed to be real. At this point—somewhere between Freud and Nietzsche—it is not so much the case that reality is being tested but that testing is constitutive of what can be designated, with the proper precautions, as real, actual, materially enabled. The test is what allows for the emergence of a reality to assert itself. This relation of test to reality may have stood its ground since Parsifal. But it is only since Nietzsche that we ask whether, as activity or object, the test discovers, exposes, establishes, or perhaps even invents the ground on which we walk the walk.”
” When a literary critic advocates a reader-response stance to other critics, still other difficulties arise. There is after all, the narcissism of the interpreting professional. Literary critics and theorists want to be able to say what a text “really” means or what it “subverts” and “decenters” or how it “maintains” some political hegemony. They want a text that does things, and they want to claim a truth, an “objective” value for their pronouncements on what it does. Hardly an unreasonable desire.
Then, creative writers have too much invested in the idea that they can make a phrase that will “work” to give it up. “Work” in that sentence offers an interesting ambiguity. It might mean, that will “succeed with my audience.” Fine–the writer tries to predict response. But “work” might mean, that will “cause readers to approve it.” That, of course, represents a futile hope. If writers could choose phrases that would cause readers to approve, every writer would turn out a best-seller that would resound down the centuries. I think most creative writers mean the first sense, but some mean the second, the impossible sense. Certainly the claim that a line or a word will “work” sounds thoroughly confusing to my ear, at least.
Even so, most scholarly writers cling to the hope that they can find words that will evoke this or that response in their readers (as, indeed, I am doing in this paper. I hope to persuade you of the validity of the reader-response position). Further, critics and reviewers have convinced themselves that they can see a poem or a movie more clearly, can say more intelligent things about it, than mere ordinary folk and that the things they write are True or Facts or Insights, quite transcending the critic’s own activities and ambitions.
This professional objection to reader-response, however, comes late in the sequence of mental processes. First comes raw, unprocessed sensation. That leads to the brain’s hard-wired conversion of sensations to perception of a world “out there” that is not-me. Then follows the “naive physics” we learned in infancy and have been using ever since. It tells us our feelings are “caused” by the something “out there.” All three stages, which I have isolated for purposes of explanation, are automatic and inseparable, each following instantaneously and ineluctably on the previous, and all outside of awareness. Only after all are completed, does the quite adult professionalism of the writer or critic begin to exert its influence, intellectually confirming–irreversibly?–the work the brain has already completed.”
[first from MLN, others from New Literary History]
Most recent 2 from PubMed (biomedical science) for scientific theory:
“Thus, the present results allow us to conclude that the transformation of the energetically most favorable isomer 2-cis(O,N) of the acylperoxo complex 2 may proceed via two distinct pathways. First of them corresponds to the direct O-O bond activation on the quintet state surface leading to the 2-N-oxo product. This reaction occurs with a 14.9 kcal/mol barrier and is 15.6 kcal/mol exothermic. Alternatively, starting from the quintet ground state the reaction could proceed through the minimum on the seam of crossing (MSX) between the quintet and triplet state potential energy surfaces followed by the O-O bond cleavage on the triplet surfaces. This would lead to the triplet MnV 2-cis(O,N)-oxo species with only 12.8 kcal/mol of activation energy, calculated relative to quintet 2-cis(O,N), because the MSX between the quintet and triplet states is located before the quintet O-O activation transition state. The second pathway is endothermic by 1.4 kcal/mol, relative to the quintet 2-cis(O,N). Thus, the first pathway is thermodynamically more favorable than the second pathway. However, one may expect that the formation of MnV 2-cis(O,N)-oxo would be kinetically slightly more favored than formation of 2-N-oxo because the latter has an activation energy lower by about 2.0 kcal/mol. Similar conclusions could be made for the 2-cis(N,O) isomer.” J Am Chem Soc
” There is another appetite signaling mechanism, which is better known than the one described above. This signaling involves leptins ([Friedman and Halaas (1998)]). These proteins are produced by adipocytes and decrease appetite and food intake. Thus, the more adipose tissue is in the body, the stronger the signal decreasing appetite would be. However, most obese people have elevated levels of leptins as compared to lean people ( [Szymczak and Laskowska-Klita (2001)]; [Considine et al. (1996)]). In spite of that, their appetite is not decreased ( [Widdowson et al. (1997)]). This effect is called leptin resistance and it is one of the puzzles about obesity. The signaling leading to leptin resistance is presented schematically in Fig. 4. Considering the interaction of the two signaling mechanisms: leptins and liver-ATP, gives an explanation of the puzzle. In obesity both of these mechanisms send signals to the brain but the signals are opposite: leptins to decrease the appetite and low ATP levels to increase the appetite. Since the energy supply is the most basic and important need of every living organism, supplying energy would be the priority signal and would override any others. Thus the final outcome would be an increase in appetite. Analysis of both types of signaling, leptins and liver-ATP signaling, is an example of the disturbed appetite control in obesity. Accepting liver signaling as the most important regulator of appetite helps to understand why it is so difficult for obese individuals to comply with low calorie diets. Liver is an energy distributor in the body and low levels of ATP in liver indicate that all of the energy sources of the body are used up. Thus, the message coming to the brain from liver cells is an “emergency” signal difficult to ignore.” J Theor Biol
and a Physical Sciences one:
We now discuss the physical interpretation of the Casimir effect. Up to now,
there are two quite different kinds of physical interpretations of the Casimir
force, i.e., the field-theory and the source theory. In the field-theory,
the Casimir force is attributable to the zero-point energy fluctuations of the
genuine EM field, where the existence of the conducting plates can only change
the boundary conditions of the EM field. However, Schwinger et al got
the same formula of the Casimir force based on the source theory, and they
pointed out that the Casimir effect is attributable to the quantum fluctuations
of the genuine matter field, where the EM field is only the medium to trans-
port the electromagnetic interactions between atomic dipoles in the dielectric
substances. However, if we choose appropriate ordering of operators in the
Hamiltonian of linearly coupled harmonic oscillators, the second-order correc-
tion to the ground-state energy can therefore be attributed solely to quantum
fluctuations of either one of the oscillators, the EM field operator or the matter
field one. Then the Casimir force can be attributable either to the gen-
uine EM field or to the genuine matter field. According to the theories of
Casimir, Schwinger et al. and Koashi and Ueda, it seems as if the
physical interpretation of the Casimir force depends on what physical models or
mathematical methods we used, but not on the expression of physical reality.” Chinese Phys Lett
Thanks, PM. I actually find the literary theory ones quite interesting. Not terribly jargony, and with something to say. Which is a fine thing! My complaint is about bad writing, so if Bad Writing disappears from the field, I will be delighted. If it’s starting to go out of fashion, well, three cheers for that.
Relevant, from Charles King,#4 The Jargon Meister:
“The Jargon-Meister appears to make an argument – and a forceful one at that. But once one peels away the terminology, it is clear that the essay really has very little content. Political science, like all academic disciplines, has its own particular language; complex concepts and ideas are expressed through terms and phrases that sometimes appear impenetrable to the uninitiated. Learning to wield these terms effectively is part of doing political science well, but their use should not get in the way of making a clear and accessible argument.”
Relevant indeed. It’s advice for students but useful for anyone. Thanks for the link, I’ll add it to ours.
One can beat a cowmanure into swords and plowshares if the tools are used for display. Pompous writing lives in science but not nearly as much as in humanities. No amount of jargon can mask the lack of content in technical fields because it is easy to see what the contribution realy is even on obscure subjects: Most of the time the problem is not realy that opaque and frank description and reproducibility are required as default. Artificial fog-making does not get one tenured in science. Con-men are found and isolated.
There is a wonderful story about Feynman attending a conference on “the Ethics of Equality” and getting completely puzzled there by the prevailing gorp. “Is Electricity Fire?”: http://lib.ru/ANEKDOTY/FEINMAN/feinman_engl.txt#48
(the misspeling and the cap letters are in the original URL)
This is all really a case of the “Emperor’s new clothes” and it is good to have someone point out that there is nothing there.
In other words, “the problematic in question concerns the imperialist and hegemonic strategy for presenting absence as presence, a manifestation of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic in which the marginal defines the ostensibly central signifier.”
I recall my days as a post-graduate student at Sussex University, a haven for critical theory, Lacanian pseudopyschobabble and terminological verbosity.
I had even spent a Christmas vacation reading – page by tortuous page – Derrida’s “Of Grammatology”. Half an hour reading and re-reading each page and generally concluding that either he had nothing to say or that what was being said was blindingly obvious once the post-structuralist clothing was removed.
Partly in parody, I wrote an essay using Derrida’s idea of “trace” and “palimpsest”, applying these to a novel by Salman Rushdie. AS might be expected, no one saw the satirical intention and I got top marks.
I found myself one day at a seminar given by Homi Bhabba, a master of the obfuscatory arts of deconstruction. I reflected on the fact that I was an intellectual who was widely read, had a large vocabulary and was generally very quick to grasp arguments. I understood not a jot of what he was trying to say.
I also had huge rows with my supervisor over my dissertation about homosexuality in English literature. First, the word “literature” was taboo (you had to say “texts” or “writing”). Second, I was guilty of “essentialism”.
There is no reason why academics cannot write about such matters as imperialism, hegemony, the construction of the “Other” using such bad writing. If something cannot be expressed clearly, then it has not been thought out clearly.
I am an intelligent, educated reader and extremely adept at using words to convey meaning (I’m a journalist, not an academic). I generally take the view that if I can’t understand something – and I will give it two or three readings – then the writer probably doesn’t understand what he is trying to say.
Apropos of the person who insisted — I paraphrase — that technical subjects require technical language: Scientific and mathematical writing is, and this is really important, not more difficult than it has to be. Writers in the sciences constantly use the simplest terms they can. I often have the sense that literary theorists want the imagined status that comes from the sciences, so they imitate the dense prose. Unfortunately, the subject matter can’t hold the weight of all that jargon. Often, not always, but often, when one “translates” theory, one gets the painfully obvious and not much else.
“I often have the sense that literary theorists want the imagined status that comes from the sciences, so they imitate the dense prose.”
Exactly – and the difficulty defense gives that away, as does the ‘nobody makes this kind of complaint about physics’ retort, which appears very often. I even saw Terry Eagleton use it in an interview recently – rather paradoxically, since the interview was about his new book which is about some of the disadvantages of ‘theory’ so one wonders why he felt compelled to defend the pointless jargon. I’ll have to find that comment (the example he chose, oddly, was botany) and put it in Quotations. But in the meantime, here is another example (which I will also add to Quotations):
“But [George] Will seems to expect the humanities to be utterly transparent to the general population, when the truth is that for those of us who have gone through graduate training, the humanities are a profession, and that the people who practice a particular profession are trained in its language. If those of us who aren’t scientists were to read scientific titles aloud to oursevles, we would laugh at how hard the words are to pronounce…But we’d assume we were lacking the tools to decipher them, not that there’s something ludicrous about science.”
Judith Frank, ‘In the Waiting Room’
Notice the none-too-subtle implication – that ‘the humanities’ (she means literature) are as arcane and technical as science. But of course they’re not, and there’s something a bit creepy and childish about people pretending otherwise.
It’s absolute drivel, but what infuriates me most about it is that I believe it has been immensely damaging to the standing of the academic profession in the world at large. It makes us appear as idiotic and dishonest as Socrates’ sophists-in-training in Aristophanes’ Clouds and the result is a devaluation of the traditional humanities disciplines. This may not bother the aristocrats who teach about one course a year while they churn out this rubbish, but for those of us who actually teach undergraduates and give of our best to them in less exalted halls, its impact is direct and very depressing.
Exactly! Plus it repels and drives away students who would otherwise be interested in literature and related subjects, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I’ve been getting emails from people who answer that very description. And that’s why I keep nagging about it – it’s not, as the defenders seem to think (or perhaps pretend to think) out of mere spite, still less out of ‘conservatism.’ It’s because this kind of thing is not harmless.
Hello-
I stumbled in here through the miracle of hyperlinks. Hope I’m not imposing.
I’m a working stiff (pre-press work at a printing company, typesetting business forms.) I didn’t have much trouble understanding what Narayan was saying (and I disagree with her.) But the writing is hilarious. Maybe it impresses her colleagues (sp?), but it just undercuts her credibility to the layman. In non-academic jargon, she’s carrying two pounds of bulls**t in a fifty-pound bag.
(translation: “Narayan’s formulational discourse utilizes hyper-stratafied logotia excessiva reinforcive of the academic hegemonic, ultimately significant of and reducible to bovine excreta.”)
Catholic priests used to say Mass in Latin so they could impose themselves between the lay people and their God by making the words inscrutable. They stopped that in the 1960’s. How come since then, the academics have been putting layers of obfuscation between lay people and our shared heritage of great literature? It’s especially ironic considering how socially democratic they claim to be.
I know I’m among some intelligent people here, so I hope I haven’t embarassed myself. Just my thoughts.
Of course you’re not imposing! I’m a working stiff myself, and as a former zookeeper, I know quite a bit about both fifty-pound bags and various brands of excreta.
Excellent point about the Latin Mass. I hadn’t thought of that, but of course it’s the perfect analogy. In fact, in the medieval church, the laity wasn’t even allowed to read the Bible. Most of it couldn’t have in any case, since it was in Latin, but the book was taboo for everyone except the clergy. Pomo jargon functions as a form of taboo, and as you say, that’s just blindingly ironic for a ‘progressive’ academic discipline.