That's it! The only ism I want to come out of your mouths is jism. Overacademic Bullshit Must Die.

not so for us mere finite lower beings, who wish to find out about stuff we know that we don't know, and are only too humbly aware that we may need to think about things we've never thought about before

does he just hang around with us to LAUGH at us? baffling are the ways of the arching gods to mortals

night oops (i'm on yr side on the war against boys thread btw)

um, i'm surprised you're arg against ''good'' writing bcz you have ranted abt bad writers in many other threads no?

From frank's essay: ''I've heard Marcus's prose attacked for being too dry. Compared to what, the Great Flood?''

Miccio didn't give any examples but this is why this thread has been so 'successful'. he didn't put a line where good criticism ends and academic crit begins and then where that ends and overacademic crit begins.

http://www.mtv.com/news/images/p/prodigy980507.gif

There's another group here (and I'm sure this doesn't exhaust things), of which I'm a member. Those who love the highly intellectual stuff and feel privileged to read the fantastic stuff here from Sinkah and Kogan and Nabisco and Jerry the Nipper and indeed Sterling - but who have not had the kind of education that means we necessarily have much info about Gramsci and the like in our heads. Kogan's Kuhn thread (on ILE) addresses this point explicitly, by explaining the ideas he wants to discuss. I find that I can generally grasp and follow the ideas reasonably well that people like those I just mentioned bring up, and can even make some attempt to address them at times, and that comes from seeing the ideas talked about, not from any previous knowledge of them (usually) or any knowledge of their originators (which I think is generally the least important bit).

I don't complain if someone cites Gramsci and I don't know what ideas they are referencing. Sometimes I might look something up, if I have the right books to hand. If I don't know, then (at least) that part of what you've said hasn't communicated with me, but there's no rule that says I'm the audience that has to be addressed. There are very many people who know far more than me here, and if you want good talk about Gramsci, you're obviously far better off talking to them than to me anyway. If you wanted to discuss some individual idea of Gramsci's, you've excluded some people who might have had something interesting to say, which seems less desirable all round (that's still far from being something to complain about, I should emphasise). Obviously intelligence doesn't perfectly correlate with knowledge of Gramsci.

Mark, I do see what you mean about the possibility of conventionally "bad" writing to contain nuggets of instinctual insight that "good" writing might obscure. My only caveat would be that writers strive for the instinctual insights rather than the confusion. If confusion results, so be it. But sometimes I get the feeling that certain writers like this willfully allusive style for its own sake.

Oops: "he lucidly explains things that I already had a instinctual grasp of" --> You don't find this valuable in itself? Or would you prefer to keep all your thoughts on an instinctual level? (Personally, I love when a writer does this; it helps me communicate my instincts to others.)