EMP 2008 Pop Conference

I would go to this more often if I could tolerate human company

Ha.

Christgau's been doing some post-EMP blogging. He liked Regina (formerly Gina) Arnold's presentation on less well-known festivals around the time of Woodstock, and he liked his sister's talk.

That post in particular.

someone differs a bit with Alfred re: academics-speak

April 24 posting

http://www.michaeljkramer.net/cr/

I don't know him.

I'm not sure how bemoaning the use of academic jargon adduces my anti-intellectualism.

Yep. Nor am I sure how bemoaning some dense music-critic speak addresses unclear academic jargon.

"'You Say Tomato': An Attempt to Decontextualize the Retrofitting of Academese Into Weblogging Communication Via Message Board Interaction, or, GOT BLOG?!?"

Here's a list of words from (A) Soto's post, (B) Roberta Smith's New York Times article, (C) the Culture Rover post, and (D) various Christgau pieces, since Culture Rover brought him up:

A.

"praxis"
"teleological"
"heteronormative" as in "heteronormative valences"
"valences" as in "heteronormative valences"

B.

"reference" as a verb, rather than "referring to," as in "referencing late capitalism"
"privilege" as a verb, rather than "favor," as in "privileging the male gaze"
"imbricate" as in "Artists 'imbricate' ideological subtexts into their images," rather than "weave"
"practice" as in "Duchamp's practice" or "Picasso's studio practice" rather than "work"

C.

"deploy" as in "deploy words poorly," rather than "use"
"probe" as in "probe the concepts," rather than "make sense of"
"discourses" as in "these same discourses are at work in criticism," rather than "word choices and perspectives" or "conversations" or "the way we think about things"
"embedded" as in "the opinions of arts journalists are embedded in specialized trivia," rather than "grounded"

D.

"meliorist" as in saying "I have a meliorist streak"
"jiving" as in Otis Blue contains "live tracks that preserve for history Redding's country-goes-uptown style of fun--even emoting 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' like his whole future depends on it, he jives a little."
"bumptious" as in "bumptious takeover of Sam Cooke's 'Shake'"
"trancey" as in "Trancey desert guitar patterns are cut by a sour two-sax horn section"
"pungently" as in "On his first major-label album, Carll rocks as needed across a rowdy life-scape he describes pungently ('Pills in the tip jar, blood on the strings')..."

My opinion:

Most of these would probably be unfamiliar to people on the street, at least in the way they are used. But that can't be the standard for rejection--we learn good new words all the time.

For me, the only compelling reason to use a widely unfamiliar word is that it is simply the best, most exact, or descriptive word for something, and that anyone looking it up would feel they've learned something about what you're describing.

Along these lines, Culture Rover (C) shoots himself in the foot somewhat with those examples, because in each case the academic word is vaguer, more pointlessly loaded, or burdened with a meaning that's entirely different ("probe" does not mean "makes sense of").

Same with each one of the words Roberta Smith rightly attacks (B). In each case, the new word is more broadly evocative, and thus in more need of unpacking (there's a good academic word). If you "privilege" something, are you giving it a place of privilege in your own thinking, or granting it something akin to the social privileges of class and race? And in either case, what does that mean exactly?

Of the words Soto dismisses (A), I think the case could be made for "teleological" as good shorthand for anything that smacks of the pursuit of purpose or design in world. As for the rest, I can't find a compelling reason to use "praxis" in place of "practice." "Valence" is poetic only if you're a chemistry major--it's a kind of chemical bond. "Heteronormative" seems useful, but actually muffles the impact of the words you'd use to describe its concept. (You could say the same for "heterosexism," which is even broader, but most people at least know what that word means.) Isn't it more pointed to say that someone endorses a homophobic view of what's normal and what isn't, rather than say that person is being "heteronormative"?

Christgau (D) regularly sends me to the dictionary, but always for good words: "Meliorism" basically means faith in social progress as something real. I knew "jiving" is black English for joking or teasing, and can vaguely infer what this might mean musically without hearing it. "Bumptious" means "presumptuously, obtusely, and often noisily self-assertive." I recognize "trancey" as rock-critic slang shorthand for that which is designed to induce a trance, or anything resembling something so designed, but I imagine I could guess what he meant if IO didn't. I usually hear "pungent" as "strong" before the word "smell," so I take "pungently" as an appropriately poetic variation on "vividly."

I really don't really don't see this as a town-gown battle, in other words. It's a jargon vs. anti-jargon battle.

Of course critics use a specialized vocabulary, but the point is to draw the public in and teach them something, just as you would need to use a few fancy words to describe the workings of the sun or the human body. Anyone who thinks complex ideas can't be expressed in everyday language should read A Brief History of Time. Or, I don't know, any good writer.

Very very well put, Peter -- I feel exactly the same way and you articulated it perfectly.

there's a real exclusionary/ classist angle to this (ab)use of language that I've always been annoyed by.

Thanks for the analysis, Pete. To sum up: it should be clear from my post (if not, it's my fault), and, heck, my published work, that I don't squirm around Big Words; but I always try to keep my audience in my mind, and if form meets content in the snuggest of ways. Hell, it's what I do as an instructor! Orwell's one of my mentors.

*and TO ASSURE that form meets content in the snuggest of ways.

I should add that I actually got a lot out of the EMP presentations that used a lot of academic jargon--but not because of the jargon!

http://www.najp.org/articles/2008/04/emp-iii.html

more christgau

Hey y'all -

I stumbled onto this conversation on the web. Hope it's okay to clarify my post on Culture Rover. My point was not to say viva jargon! The comments of Peter and others here sound right to me: there's a danger of misusing language. My point was that when we critique jargon, is it possible to still explore the ideas that might lurk behind that jargon? Yes, sometimes the jargon is full of sound and fury signifying nothing, but at other times the jargon hints, in its stilted way, at new perspectives and approaches. It shines a light of stangeness across familiar topics. It can get us out of our heads to see (or hear, or just sense in general) things in a new way. In other words, I'm worried that in our (rightful) focus on keeping jargon out of the language that we use, we might be throwing out the intellectual baby with the jargonistic bathwater.

A very cool intellectual historian, Eliot Gorn, once commented (I'm paraphrasing here): "We cultural historians do not 'interrogate' things. We don't trace 'trajectories.' We don't explore the 'terrain.' Those are things the military does." Gorn was suspicious of the way in which cultural historians were using the language of war, slipping into frameworks that distorted culture. Okay, yes, I agree. But it is kind of intriguing, just for a moment, to think about culture through those metaphors (jargoned up as they are).

So I basically agree about policing and limiting jargon, but I don't want to close down the language too much. Can't this also limit and police ideas, keep people from getting outside of the assumptions in which they might feel trapped? Being trapped in this way seems as potentially Orwellian to me as any doublespeak.

Glad to listen more to your ideas and thoughts and comments about all this. Hope it was okay to barge in with my own perspective here.

Best,
Culture Rover (Michael)

Bump a bit (since I don't know if people noticed this). My coherence is rapidly dying today so I have nothing to add beyond the belief that there is a middle ground which is always negotiable in situations like this.

Yep

"Heteronormative" seems useful, but actually muffles the impact of the words you'd use to describe its concept. (You could say the same for "heterosexism," which is even broader, but most people at least know what that word means.) Isn't it more pointed to say that someone endorses a homophobic view of what's normal and what isn't, rather than say that person is being "heteronormative"?

Actually, Pete, "homophobic" and "heteronormative" mean two different things. I can elaborate but I'm not sure you're still reading (or if this is even the proper place for it).

In any event, the question that rarely gets asked in these debates is WHO exactly is getting effected by such jargon? There's rarely an assessment re: the precise damage it's supposedly causing.

And I must reiterate what Culture Rover said in his blog post. Journalists are just as susceptible to these charges as academics. "Jargon-free" does not necessarily mean "easy to read." My love for Xgau is well-known. But even the man himself admits his writing is difficult to wade through. I'm still not 100% certain why he likes Daydream Nation judging purely from his original Consumer Guide entry. And while "kvetch" and "kvell" are hardly jargon per se, his review of KC & The Sunshine Band's Greatest Hits read like a communiqué from Planet Xavion to a suburban Midwest nineteen-year-old who had no clue what those words meant (or even that they were words in the first place - "kvell I" looked like "kvell ONE" to me). Also, he's sprinkled his writing with academic jargon at least as early as using the word "signifier" in his review of Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places (1981).

Oh and check that thread where some ILMers freaked about his Vaughan/Bogan review and claimed he-wasn't- talking-about-the-music even though he was using the "impolite discourse" of rawk inn rawl.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

But you're kidding yourself if you think it goes down easy. In fact, every essay I've read so far in the latest issue of the academic Cinema Journal, for instance, is much easier to understand than Scott's review. And the same goes for Dave Queen's masterful Scorpions discography from Marooned (or many of his threads here - check the Siren vs. Oh No It's Devo one). Or Stewart Voegtlin's stuff for Stylus. Etc. All great. All very difficult.

Finally, I've never read anything academic (not even Spivak) as impenetrable as Meltzer's The Aesthetic of Rock. And I even have a mind as august (and academic!) as Simon Frith to back me up on that one.

ILM wouldn't let me link to ILM in that post for some reason. So voila:

Xgau takes music criticism to a new level

Roxy Music 'Siren' vs 'Oh No, It's Devo'

I don't think anyone's arguing for a Manichean approach to rockcrit. Thanks to respectful demurrals by Carl Wilson and Michael J, Kramer, I've been answering emails for three weeks.

The bottom line: anyone who knows my work and tastes (and what I do to pay the mortgage) can't mistake me for an anti-intellectual. A pedant maybe.

You know-nothing revanchist jingoist. Oh wait.

Thanks for posting, Michael, and I half agree--like I said, good babies in that EMP bathwater.

But jargon is bad by definition. That's why one person's jargon is another person's exact term. When Noam Chomsky spoke at UW in the late '80s, and someone asked him why he didn't use "ruling class" and "capitalist" in his speech, Chomsky said he didn't see the need for Marxist jargon. To the Marxists, Chomsky's use of "elites" was the jargon of an anti-Marxist.

In truth, jargon lies in the ear. The question to ask is: What is being communicated besides simply what is being said? And why? And to what effect?

E.g. if you say "Let's interrogate this discourse," you probably mean:

1.) "Let's talk about this debate"
2.) "I've slogged through a lot of the same shitty postmodern textbooks as you have"
and if you mean this ironically:
3.) "I'm making fun of people that have slogged through these books" or "woe is us"

The precise damage being done is that a lot of smart people have not slogged through those books, often for the perfectly good reason that they're shitty postmodern textbooks, and this (I'm assuming very large) audience either tunes out on impact when they hear this jargon, or has to do the additional mental work of translating what you're saying into English.

By definition, jargon has the opposite effect of poetry or poetic prose: it numbs and clouds where better language makes vivid. Rather than shine the light of strangeness, it casts the pall of routine.

But Pete, what exactly counts as jargon? Do "kvetch" and "kvell" count? I mean, they aren't even English in the first place whereas at the very least "interrogate" and "discourse" are.

One can definitely substitute "a Xgau (or Seward or Queen or Voegtlin or Meltzer) review" for "shitty postmodern textbooks" and make the exact same argument you're making above.

And I've never understood what's so bad about doing additional mental work. If it's smart people we're talking about here, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

And Soto, somewhat hilariously, I didn't understand your last post (well, really, just the second sentence).

I've gotten flak for remarking that there was an awful lot of academic jargon at EMP this year.

Ah! Capice.

x-post

Kevin, if what you're driving at is that "heteronormative" also includes the simple ignorance of any norms outside heterosexuality, isn't that also better put just by saying "ignorance of any norms outside heterosexuality"? I don't see how combining all these different things (including, as I said, homophobic attitudes toward what's normal) into one vague word is an improvement, much less an innovation.

It's as if I decided that we should have a word for how war has become the norm in our time, and peace the deviation, and called this concept "warmalcy." It would actually take me more work to define the coinage over and over again than to just get across what I'm talking about in words that thousands of people have already used before to describe the same thing. But then maybe I'd get less credit for having nothing new to say.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it kind of pisses me off that this sort of thing is referred to as "theory."

Why not just say "irrational fear of homosexual men and women" instead of "homophobic?"

And was Soto wrong to use "Manichean?" To be honest, I had no clue what it meant. But I looked it up and all is well. Or so I thought...

And fwiw, Theory is extremely unpopular in academia right now.

x-post

And I've never understood what's so bad about doing additional mental work. If it's smart people we're talking about here, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

I hope I make my listeners and readers work. Work is fun. But the work should be worth it: It takes work to see the connections between ideas, to start making connections yourself as you listen or read, hearing ideas come together almost musically. It's work to "get" the subtle things someone is trying to put across (I left a lot between the lines in my EMP talk just because I figured it's best to start with what people most likely don't know, or don't agree about). In the case of a writer such as Christgau, there are also the references and slang and jokes and send-you-to-the-dictionary words I already mentioned.

The kind of work I don't like is the communication equivalent of someone throwing a book on the floor and asking you to pick it up versus someone handing you a book: Sure, I could use the excercise, but fuck you all the same. I get nothing out of the work it takes to translate "interrogate the discourse" to "examine the debate." Whereas even indirectly, Christgau has taught us both something good. "Kvetch" is most definitely English by now, having entered American usage as "complain" through Yiddish, and I'm surprised you haven't heard it. "Kvell" I didn't know until I looked it up, but it seems like a great Yiddishism to me. "Signifier" meanwhile isn't really academic jargon; it might be an academic word, but it means exactly what it is.

I can't defend a bunch of writing I haven't read, so I'll just repeat that I'm against jargon in any setting--oh, sorry, "context"!

Why not just say "irrational fear of homosexual men and women" instead of "homophobic?

Well first of all because that's not what homophobic means, but I've already given you enough to argue with here.

Here's Wiki:

"Homophobia (from Greek homós: one and the same; phóbos: fear, phobia) is a term used to describe irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuals.[3][4][5][6] It can also mean "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals".[7] Homophobic is the adjective form of this term used to describe the qualities of these characteristics while homophobe is the noun form given as a title to individuals with homophobic characteristics."

And here's Answers.com which Google links to whenever you search a word:

"Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men."

Ok we could probably go back and forth here all night as I have some major problems with what you're saying. I just want to address this for the record:

"Kvetch" is most definitely English by now, having entered American usage as "complain" through Yiddish, and I'm surprised you haven't heard it.

The suburban Midwest nineteen-year-old me had never heard it before which I hope doesn't surprise you. I certainly know the word now. Oddly enough, I've never heard it without "kvell."

Whoops, sorry to read so sloppily, Kevin.

I'd argue that Wikipedia is wrong when it comes to "homophobia" (and on a lot of other words, like "irony"). Leave asside the fact that "discrimination" is used to mean exactly its opposite (a lack of discrimination based on prejudice, "homophobia" is modern slang; it doesn't come from its Greek roots; if it did, it would mean "fear of same." It's a made-up word combining homosexual with phobia, and the way it's commonly used, it encompasses the spectrum of attitudes towards homosexuals that "racism" does when it comes to race, or sexism does when it comes to sex. "Irrational fear" would be last on the list: The common comeback "I'm not homophobic, I just hate gays" is nonsense.

Sorry to go on, obviously words are something I like to argue about...

I can't force anyone to use the words I want, but 95% of the time, I use the term "homobigotry" instead, and stress it so that people realize I'm asserting that word and not the weak colloquialism Pete just called out. I only use "homophobia" if it is literally that, which is far rarer than the former.

ass-ide

ass interface development environment?

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

I've gotten flak for remarking that there was an awful lot of academic jargon at EMP this year.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, May 6, 2008 4:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

yes, and frequently divorced from any of the academic rigor with which it is (more usefully) deployed to better effect.

"hegemony" was definitely the word of the weekend.

"neoliberalism"

What I really wanna know is, which if any academic jargon phrases would make the best band name? The Valences? Discourse? (Maybe for a disco group?) The Jargon (pronounced with accent on syllable 2: "Jar-Gone") would be a great name for an alien race that bedevils Doctor Who. "There's been an outbreak of Jargon at EMP."

Did someone say jargon. Then again, we are talking about Dartmouth, as reported on in the Wall Street Journal:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways."

"neoliberalism"

Ha, don't get me started.

I took Alfred's criticism to mean that while these words may have larger meanings behind them, a lot of people weren't using them that way, but were instead obfuscating their otherwise-understandable ideas, and that this is bad.

The problem seems to me that each term has essentially a moral argument associated with it, and that when someone just throws it out there you'd have to take all day to push back against the premises inherent in the jargon, so it really limits debate.

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences.

Poor Northwestern.

Hahaha

Always amazing when the left and right go so far around the bend they meet up again. Sounds like (based admittedly on no direct exposure to her writings) her quasi-progressive critique of science's aspersions to truth would dovetail quite nicely with the recent fundamentalist attack on science.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

Skot (and I as his significant other) got death threats from "Jukies" in response to that review. It really riled some folks. Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

holy shit, that first paragraph is hysterical