Extracts

Ok so I have to read the Nussbaum essay again, for the ___th time. I have to share some of the particular gems.

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1435632503872708618

Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action.

See also: tweeting seditiously.

Trained as a philosopher, she is frequently seen (more by people in literature than by philosophers) as a major thinker about gender, power, and the body.

Much more. Much much much more. People in literature and people on Twitter.

It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are.

That one makes me laugh every single time.

Nussbaum goes on to discuss Butler’s habit of alluding to an array of “other theorists,” who are incompatible with each other, without ever explaining or giving enough context to let the reader understand the allusions. That’s not how philosophy is done, but it very much is how a certain kind of “Theory” is done.

Thus one is led to the conclusion that the allusiveness of the writing cannot be explained in the usual way, by positing an audience of specialists eager to debate the details of an esoteric academic position. The writing is simply too thin to satisfy any such audience. It is also obvious that Butler’s work is not directed at a non-academic audience eager to grapple with actual injustices. Such an audience would simply be baffled by the thick soup of Butler’s prose, by its air of in-group knowingness, by its extremely high ratio of names to explanations.

In other words it’s all showing off. It’s a lazy, empty, pointless exercise in showing off.

Why does Butler prefer to write in this teasing, exasperating way? The style is certainly not unprecedented. Some precincts of the continental philosophical tradition, though surely not all of them, have an unfortunate tendency to regard the philosopher as a star who fascinates, and frequently by obscurity, rather than as an arguer among equals. When ideas are stated clearly, after all, they may be detached from their author: one can take them away and pursue them on one’s own. When they remain mysterious (indeed, when they are not quite asserted), one remains dependent on the originating authority. The thinker is heeded only for his or her turgid charisma. 

Turgid charisma. Five stars.

In this way obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on, some complexity of thought, where in reality there are often familiar or even shopworn notions, addressed too simply and too casually to add any new dimension of understanding.

I hate that about it. Really hate it. I hate the fakery, I hate the conceit, I hate the imposition on the innocent readers, I hate the fraud, I hate the power-tripping – I despise it. And she gets away with it to this day.

When Butler’s notions are stated clearly and succinctly, one sees that, without a lot more distinctions and arguments, they don’t go far, and they are not especially new. Thus obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument.

Obscurity plus name-dropping. It wouldn’t work without the name-dropping.

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