academic language is often purposely obfuscated

Here's the Judith Butler glob iatee posted in the other thread:

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”

Apparently this is award-worthy obfuscation. Is there no way to further parse this sentence to the author's satisfaction; or, is it the point to make the reader re-read the sentence a dozen times in order to even start to grasp even what is going on there; or, is it perfectly clear what this means to everybody but me :/

― sleepingbag, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 6:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this is nowhere near as bad as the heidegger quote, but it's another example of a very simple idea being presented as incredibly complex for no good reason. what butler's saying here is basically just common sense:

structuralist accounts tended to assume that capital structures social relations in a fixed way. these were replaced by a view that takes time into account, acknowledging that hegemonic structures must be continually reasserted and are thus subject to change. this shift represents a move away from a view ("Althussarian") that treats structural wholes as fixed objects, to one that emphasizes the ways in which structured power relations change and assert themselves over time.

i included that last sentence there because i was trying to duplicate not just the meaning but also the general structure of butler's argument, but you'll notice that it's entirely redundant. it's just a slightly more elaborate restatement of what was already said in the first two sentences. And Butler does all this in a single sentence! She puts forth a simple idea, but makes it seem complicated by employing jargon and redundancy, and by failing to break the argument into digestible chunks. Then, without even ending the sentence, she repeats the whole damn thing. It's just ridiculous. She's intentionally presenting a simple and useful observation as a bewilderingly complex intellectual thicket.

you know who else repeats the whole damn thing?

i mean, flopson and iatee (et al) OTM. there is a culture of deliberate obscurantism and obfuscation that seems to flourish in philosophy and literature departments. it's not a product of post-structuralism, so far as i can tell. this culture been an intrinsic part of philosophy as an academic discipline for a great deal longer than that. it justifies itself in many ways (as technical specificity, as a product of intellectual complexity and/or "informed" engagement, as a critical or even a political device), but it seems mostly to be a product of competition, narcissism and defensiveness within academic circles. it's a tool by which writers and thinkers assert their own intellectual significance, a lure to those who pride themselves on their ability to comprehend the supposedly "incomprehensible", and a defense against criticism.

you know who else repeats the whole damn thing?

― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:38 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol, well, perhaps i do. i'm just posting on a message board, though - thinking aloud, mostly. i could probably stand to go back and edit a bit before i hit submit, but i'm honestly trying to be as clear, simple and direct as i can.

xp oh man you took out "re-articulation" and "possibilities", I thought that was the point of the sentence?

think a lot of this obscureness is a kind of caginess / self-protection. unless the language is watertight ( and it's clear that it contains the academic backstory) then the writer risks opening themselves up to easy criticism... which might invalidate whatever point they're trying to make.

xp

i don't know man, you've made your point umpteen times, and it's your opinion, and ok. but i don't see you really engaging with counter-arguments much more than "no you're wrong" and then repeating the point. and the repetition itself becomes a wearying debating tactic, like if you hammer away at it enough i'm gonna realise deleuze and guattari are frauds and go home and throw my books in the bin?

argue away by all means but i thought rather than just snark it out - my instinct because i find this inflexibility pretty frustrating - i wd be honest about this. i feel like by insisting on "clarity" and "meaning" and ideas that exist outside of discourse that you're simply not addressing the issues that are central to the thinkers you're disparaging.

i totally see why you'd say that NV, but i hadn't participated in this thread prior to those last few posts. i think you're responding to stuff i said in the feminism thread. and yeah, i did intentionally repeat those arguments here, but only cuz i was treating this as a new discussion.

i feel like by insisting on "clarity" and "meaning" and ideas that exist outside of discourse that you're simply not addressing the issues that are central to the thinkers you're disparaging.

i sort of agree, but only because i have to. i mean, you're right: "clarity" and "meaning" are not absolute and do not exist outside the discourse. i understand that the writers in question may not have the same relation to or understanding of these things that i do. but relative to the examples presented so far, this argument strikes me as self-serving sophistry. (no offense, NV, i'm talking about their "sophistry", not yours.) i don's see any evidence that profoundly different approaches to clarity or meaning are in play. i do not see anything that's being effectively said about language, power or the construction of meaning that couldn't be better said in 10-20 "clearly arranged" words. i see nothing radical, nothing transformative, nothing useful in the "obscurantism and obfuscation" i'm deriding.

relative to writers like barthes, i do see a kind of literary virtue in bewildering complexity: the joy in decoding dense, complex and beautifully written language. "the pleasure of the text." but writers like barthes are extremely rare, and their influence on much less interesting thinkers and stylists seems to have been tragic.

/"those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by 'facts,' i.e., by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize 'facts' never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light. They are also meant not to notice this; for thereupon they would have to be at a loss and therefore useless. But idolizers and idols are used wherever gods are in flight and so announce their nearness."

― max, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 7:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark/

that is straight nonsense, max, a hollow defense of obfuscation that is itself willfully obscure. the more "difficult" aspects may be an artifact of the translation, i dunno, but the idea that it would be "suicide" for philosophy to permit intelligibility is completely ridiculous on the face of it, whether or not philosophy is dependent on "'facts,' i.e., beings". though it's almost impossible to parse completely, heidegger's argument seems to be something like this:

/"philosophy can never be confirmed by facts. therefore (1), intelligibility is suicide for philosophy. those who idolize "facts" do not notice that their idols have no intrinsic authority and, instead, gain whatever authority they might seem to possess from human belief. the idolizers are not meant to notice this (2) because if they did, their own authority would be lost. idolizers and idols are used when gods are in flight, and so announce their nearness (3)./

(1) the dependent nature of this claim is not made clear in the original text, but i have to assume that it's implied, as it would otherwise be a complete non-sequitur. unfortunately, it's still a functional non-sequitur, as it remains completely unsupported. nothing else in the passage gives us clear reason to believe that "intelligibility" might be "suicide for philosophy".

(2) "meant" by whom? there's no way to know, as text does not address this.

(3) okay, wtf is "gods are in flight" supposed to mean in this context? who or what are the "gods" in question and what are the means and meaning of their "flight"? is heidegger simply restating his earlier assertion that authority is being conjured by human belief? is he suggesting that a certain sacredness is being invoked? he seems to be /attempting/ to pull some kind of philosophical "gotcha!" on those who put stock in facts and factuality by suddenly treating his previous "idlolizers"/"idols" metaphor as though it were a literally and precisely accurate way of describing their beliefs. but it's not. it's just a metaphor, one with a great deal of inbuilt imprecision. no one "idolizes" facts in a truly religious sense.

the worst part is that heidegger never makes clear how all his talk about facts, idols and their idolizers, borrowed light, and gods in flight actually supports his central thesis: the "suicidal" nature of philosophical intelligibility. is he simply saying that philosophy cannot be proved by facts, and therefore philosophers must hide this fact (lol) from those who place stock in such things? or is he perhaps saying that there's some corollary (but unstated) idol/idolizer relationship that gives philosophical un-intelligibility its own authority, and that just as believers in facts must not question the source from which facts derive their authority, philosophers must not question this?

this is the worst sort of obscurantist gibberish. i suppose it's appropriate that it's presented as a defense of incomprehensibility, but it doesn't even make its own case satisfactorily.

Lmao

oops, mistook your "and ideas that exist outside of discourse" for "AS ideas that exist outside of discourse". makes my response a bit nonsensical. it's true that i'm not responding to the writers ideas so much as how they're communicated, but that's one of the unstated framing questions for this entire thread: "is the method of an idea's communication important, and if so, how?"

my position is that the method of communication is extremely important, and to the extent that the primary intent of writing IS the clear communication of information, then writing should avoid obfuscation at all costs.

if the primary intent of writing is NOT the communication of information, then the game changes. if the writing in question is instead a kind of formally focused artwork, experiment, or political act, then it should obviously be judged by different criteria. perhaps i'm ignoring this. but i think that most of the writing in question presents itself primarily as the communication of ideas, and that the artistic, experimental and political implications of its formal construction have little value.

that last to noodle...

not sure i get that heiddeger quote. urging philosophers to be intelligible isn't the same thing as urging them to only state 'facts.' just because you're not limited to factual statements doesn't mean the nonfactual ones you do make have to be unintelligible

― flopson, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

my problem with this is that soon 'intelligible' becomes code for 'things that I don't understand.' it's like a yelper who says 'the food here wasn't good' well what is good food 'food that I think is good!'

that is literally the worst exegesis on heidigger, perhaps on any philosopher, that I have ever read btw

Lmao

― max, Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:27 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

care to expand on that, max?

it isn't the "communication" of ideas - taking idea x out of the ether, carrying it to you the reader in a crystal prose vessel and unloading it into your brain at a conceptual level at the other end - because this model of ideas and communication is itself under challenge. the vessel is the idea, no idea exists outside of the vessel.

actually derrida iirc says it's more complicated than this otherwise translation wd be impossible, but also maybe all reading and writing is translation in a mathematical sense, always.

that is literally the worst exegesis on heidigger, perhaps on any philosopher, that I have ever read btw

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:43 AM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

how so?

con tenderizer I fell like u shd stop trying to extract specific and translatable meaning out of everything u read & just vibe w sentences instead

it isn't the "communication" of ideas - taking idea x out of the ether, carrying it to you the reader in a crystal prose vessel and unloading it into your brain at a conceptual level at the other end - because this model of ideas and communication is itself under challenge. the vessel is the idea, no idea exists outside of the vessel.

i get that. but "i have a car" is nonetheless a clearer statement than "Xsldkhtosedlkrhfdsdh" in the present context. the fact that one is interrogating the structure of language does not mean that one's use of language suddenly becomes beyond criticism. quite the opposite, i'd think. even if that criticism doesn't respond to the arguments contained in the text.

well for one thing, you're pretending that that excerpt is a freestanding piece of text in itself, and then taking it to town for not having justified its propositions in the 3 sentences that you're 'analyzing.' ??? 'hey there's no support for this in the text' well why don't you go read the original text in full

gonna cite to this top 10 dn classic:

contl;drizer (J0rdan S.), Saturday, 15 May 2010 02:46 (1 year ago)

con tenderizer I fell like u shd stop trying to extract specific and translatable meaning out of everything u read & just vibe w sentences instead

― max, Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:47 AM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark

chill noize dude translator not helping

well for one thing, you're pretending that that excerpt is a freestanding piece of text in itself, and then taking it to town for not having justified its propositions in the 3 sentences that you're 'analyzing.' ??? 'hey there's no support for this in the text' well why don't you go read the original text in full

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:49 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

the heidegger quote was offered as an example of something in a thread dedicated to the construction of academic language. so i attempted to decode it, in the spirit of the thread. i understood in saying that "there's no way to know, as the text does not address this" that a longer extract might make this more clear, but i was limiting myself to the example at hand.

i don't know why the rickrolled video keeps popping up but it seems appropriate

the fact that one is interrogating the structure of language does not mean that one's use of language suddenly becomes beyond criticism

you can't interrogate "language" - most of the philosophers we're discussing here aren't doing that most of the time, if you want a broad simple category i guess they are interrogating "thought" - from outside of language. there isn't a stable high ground from which you can look down and survey the structures below. the interrogation of thought has to take place within the material of thought, and therefore can only refer to more thought.

good job at upending heidigger on a message board

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻ɹǝbbıpıǝɥ┻)

let me know if you need my input on this. email is in my profile.

caek wd u say u vibe w astrophysics

you can't interrogate "language" - most of the philosophers we're discussing here aren't doing that most of the time, if you want a broad simple category i guess they are interrogating "thought" - from outside of language. there isn't a stable high ground from which you can look down and survey the structures below. the interrogation of thought has to take place within the material of thought, and therefore can only refer to more thought.

― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:54 AM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

sure, but since you mentioned derrida, i thought it was appropriate to speak of "language" instead of clarifying the fact that i meant "the way the structures of communication encode other types of structures". get the rest.

good job at upending heidigger on a message board

― lolinternets (dayo), Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:54 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm just saying what i think about a chunk of text. why does it have to be any more or less than that?

'that's just like, my opinion man'

ok this is annoying now, stop

criticizing heidegger is no different than criticizing george bush or david bowie. some things we like and/or find value in, other things, not so much. the supposed importance of the things in question shouldn't concern us in the least.

think a lot of this obscureness is a kind of caginess / self-protection. unless the language is watertight ( and it's clear that it contains the academic backstory) then the writer risks opening themselves up to easy criticism.

otm for academic language - theory-word density is only one symptom; I run into the other version of humanities bad writing more - everything is 'interesting' or 'complex', lots of hedging whenever a connection between things is suggested, nervous about judgements, maybe lightly theorised - 'discourse'. Sort of marshy to get through even if there's good info in there. Maybe a result of overcrowded, competitive disciplines with massive secondary literatures.

Don't really have anything to add here, but think the number of exceptions you have to make to a 'clarity of communication' edict render it near-worthless - trade talk is ok within a trade, sometimes your rhetoric has to try and break things, theory/philosophy has been using complicated literary surfaces for a long time. I mean I'm not really a theory type, but Deleuze is a fucking A1 trip, & it's density & energy & imagination that's doing it, not style guide clarity.

hope the action poll fires back up soon, maybe commando will place again.

there is some pretty awful writing in astrophysics, but most of that is due to the understandable difficulties of non-native english speakers.

there is plenty of rubbish like gbx took down on the other thread though.

i can think of 2 astronomers whose prose style in research articles i actually vibe to. this guy: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.3403v1.pdf (who has an advantage because he writes about theory) and this guy: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.3015v1.pdf (who mixes impolitic hardman precision and a conversational tone in a way i find v amusing)

fwiw all the good astro writers i can think of either have a US liberal arts background or remind me of kingsley amis.

here's the first guy writing about something other than equations http://ukads.nottingham.ac.uk/abs/2004IAUS..220....3B (click the PDF link at the top)

I really like the tone of the second guy and the way he's continually bringing the focus back to the wider picture makes me almost think for a minute I understand what he's saying! is he well thought-of in the field?

A lot of Bill Bryson's science book is him tearing his hair out about the pattern of "dude discovers something - dude can't write for shit, his mumblings get published in the parish newsletter - someone else 30 years later discovers it and can write and it's named after them - first dude's grandchildren go through his papers after he dies and realise what's gone on"

he's an extremely influential guy in my field, yes. some people find him a little blunt, which i think comes through in the writing (in a way i myself like).

the conflation of the blunt and the baroquely intellectual is maybe my favorite look in a writer, cf mencken, flann o'brien, jonathan meades (the fact that i disagree with all of them about substantial parts of their thought is perhaps cause for further reflection on my part)

speaking of mencken:

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

yeah that second guy is great!

not sure i get that heiddeger quote. urging philosophers to be intelligible isn't the same thing as urging them to only state 'facts.' just because you're not limited to factual statements doesn't mean the nonfactual ones you do make have to be unintelligible

― flopson, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

my problem with this is that soon 'intelligible' becomes code for 'things that I don't understand.' it's like a yelper who says 'the food here wasn't good' well what is good food 'food that I think is good!'

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Thursday, 16 February 2012 06:42 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is literally the worst exegesis on heidigger, perhaps on any philosopher, that I have ever read btw

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Thursday, 16 February 2012 06:43 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're right dayo, your analogy about how some people say they like food but really that just means they think food is good really openned my eyes about this heiddeger quote, thats definitely a much better exegesis of this text

sorry I posted that stupid quote in the first place

nussbaum says some v contentious things in that piece. her partic brand of clarity reads as a sort of certainty where often there can be none. it seems to obfuscate the inherently openness of what she is talking about, sharpening it into an unrecognisable image of itself. the argument is often evasive but it struts around, seeming sure of itself. it seems its tactics are not dissimilar from those it seeks to condemn.

― judith, Thursday, 16 February 2012 04:03 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd be interested to know more about your take on this. what are the contentious points? also, did you read the last half?

fwiw that medical thing I posted was selected completely at random, and is not meant to be representative of truly horrible science writing

like I said in the other thread, the existence of bad writing in other fields doesn't get the humanities off the hook

otmfm

Humanities really have the most to answer for. In the sense that they are directly engaged with the act of communication, issues of translation, analysis, and application of hard data to 'soft' human squishy stuff, clear writing is more their domaine - and the lack thereof less excusable – than in hard sciences.

fwiw that medical thing I posted was selected completely at random, and is not meant to be representative of truly horrible science writing

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Thursday, 16 February 2012 14:37 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, but that constant drip drip of turgid and unnecessarily crufty/obscure prose is a major downer