Comments on: Bad writing

By: tim

tim — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:25:14 +0000

One way to determine if it is bad writing or just difficult writing is to look at the way the language is used. Is the language a technical jargon – in which the words have highly specific, well-defined denotative meanings, or is it a slang – in which the words have very loosely defined, broad, and (perhaps apart from connotation) interchangeable meanings? Even the layperson can look for consistency of usage across the text. Mathematicians and scientists take a Humpty Dumpty approach to words all the time (quark, group, ring, top, bottom, field) but once they’ve mastered the words, the words are kept tightly disciplined. If the words have slippery meanings that shift and slide around in the text, if they have distinctions that are largely connotative, then you are in the territory of bad writing. There are many ways to write badly, obviously, but this debate seems to be addressing one specific type – the kind in which a fake jargon is used to disguise or inflate an insignificant content. It is also possible to use a genuine technical jargon to disguise or inflate content – it seems that’s what the entry above (using Brad Delong as a springboard) is about. That’s harder to uncover. And it’s also possible create impossibly bad prose (the prepositional grab bag / passive voice approach of most textbooks and “officialese”) whether or not their is content worth communicating. But I’m not sure these latter two are what we are addressing here.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 13:35:20 +0000

I’ve already said, I’m not dismissing the entire body of literary theory. That’s why the article is titled ‘Bad Writing’ and not ‘Literary Theory.’ I’m dismissing the bad stuff. Not the good stuff – the bad stuff. And, sure, I know about the internal, disciplinary argument – this is work for specialists, not a general readership, etc. I’ve had this conversation quite often. But I find it unconvincing. I have a really hard time believing that (always stipulating: in the case of bad writing) the difficulty is not worked up, for its own sake – for the sake in fact precisely of seeming like an insider, a specialist, an expert, someone with a command of an insider’s patois.

By: Jeffrey Kramer

Jeffrey Kramer — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 07:27:43 +0000

Michael, thanks for the Butler reference. You ask why greater allowance is made for obscurity in poetry than in critical theory. The first (admittedly oversimplified) answer that comes to mind is: because the theorists claim that their project is to change the world, while the poets are more likely to agree with Auden that “poetry changes nothing.” The critical theorists claim to be offering a kind of therapy, freeing us (in McLaughlin’s view) from the word-forged manacles imposed by ‘the system.’ The only justification for obscurity, in such a case, is if it’s a necessary part of the healing process. If that justification stands up, well and good for the critical theorists. If it doesn’t stand up, then the fact that obscurity is used in other contexts for other purposes (as in poetry) seems quite irrelevant.

By: Michael Sayeau

Michael Sayeau — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 03:57:51 +0000

“Is there a necessary, inherent connection between talking or writing or thinking about a difficult subject, and using difficult language?” No, the simplicity or difficulty of the writing should be determined by the writing context. A work produced for graduate students, for fellow theorists and thinkers in discipline obviously can sustain a different level of discourse than, say, a talking-head “deconstruction” of the lastest White House smut on CNN. But that’s the point. I’m tired of reading this sort of denunciation of literary theorists as somehow complicit in the failures of the left or of intellectual progress. Sure, some physicists go for the mass market, but I’m sure there are boatloads of physics papers that I’d never be able to read—would never be able to make heads or tails of. But I don’t find them pissed on the next morning in The Guardian or The Nation. It’s a little known fact that many of the most infamous of the “bad writers” do quite a bit of “clear” writing on the side. Butler wrote a quite legible piece on Guantanamo for The Nation (check the archive), for instance. There’s lots to say about the role of academics as public intellectuals. Shouldn’t they be out on the barricades instead of perched on the ivory tower and that sort of thing. But bad faith, inertia, hypocrisy are spread pretty evenly across the landscape of the left. (Writers should put down their pens and do something, politicians are estranged from the grass roots, no one could ever do enough and so on). But I’m sure this is not the point of your critique. Yes there are many—or maybe even all—who conform to an institutional vocabulary for the sake of self-betterment. But this is always the case with writing. I’m just not sure you can dismiss the entire body of literary theory because of this fact…

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 01:58:28 +0000

“Well, the point of this kind of literary theory is necessarily to talk “about” language and meaning, and its role in constituting various realities, which is an inherently difficult thing to do.” Is it? Really? Always? And if it is, does it follow that one has to make one’s language artificially difficult? If so, why does it follow? Is there a necessary, inherent connection between talking or writing or thinking about a difficult subject, and using difficult language? What about people who prefer to talk about difficult subjects in the least difficult language they can? To reduce the difficulty rather than compounding it? And do the people who do like to use difficult language to talk about difficult subjects, do it as a sort of art? Because they think it’s beautiful? A kind of poetry? Or do they do it to make their difficult work look that much more difficult. It is so very hard not to suspect that it’s the latter, at least in some cases. After all, physics is a difficult subject too, but physicists try very hard to write as clearly as they can, not as opaquely. Why is that, I wonder? Why the difference?

By: Gareth

Gareth — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 00:19:25 +0000

Well, the point of this kind of literary theory is necessarily to talk “about” language and meaning, and its role in constituting various realities, which is an inherently difficult thing to do. Lacan is difficult for a couple of reasons. First, he assumes a lot of knowledge of the Freudian and “Western” canon. If you aren’t familiar with who the Wolfman is or what the Master/Slave dialectic is about, he isn’t going to explain it to you. But, in that respect, Lacan is like any other academic. Lacan is also difficult because he uses ordinary words in specialized ways, ways that are quite different from, and to some degree, the opposite of their common-sense meanings. “Imaginary”, “Symbolic”, “Real”, etc. have special meanings. Not only does Lacan appropriate ordinary words this way, he also appropriates Freudian theory and mathematical expressions in an idiosyncratic, specialized way. The result is a system. Whether that system actually gives greater insight into human relationships and the exchange of meaning, is impossible to judge without making the effort of understanding how the various parts in the system interact. Once that investment has been made, there is a great incentive to tell other people it was worthwhile, so we can’t completely trust the Lacanians. Still, we also can’t trust the people who haven’t made the effort and assume that Lacan must be talking nonsense because they don’t understand what he is saying. The same, of course, for Judith Butler, although it would seem to me that it is even more obvious in her case that there must be something to it all. Even if you reject the idea that gender is a performance, rather than a biological reality, it must be hard to deny that idea’s influence, and its originality when first put forward.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:54:58 +0000

Well by definition I’m talking about the ones who are bad at it. There may be some who are good at it – I haven’t read any yet, but that proves nothing; I haven’t read everything. Yes, certainly, poetry can be difficult – good poetry can, and so can bad poetry. But I don’t take theory to be doing the same sort of thing poetry is doing. If it is, it really ought to call itself something other than theory – unless it just wants to play pure Humpty Dumpty. And as for philosophy – I’m not talking about philosophy, I’m talking about literary ‘theory.’

By: Michael Sayeau

Michael Sayeau — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:33:08 +0000

Ophelia – I understand that it’s all “subjective,” but my question for you and the other critics of “obscure” or “difficult” writing is to account for the value judgment in play here. If you admit that sometimes difficulty is OK, why not in the case of literary theorists, or these literary theorists, or what you will… I guess my problem with the line of talk here is that I smell a lot of snark and not much substance. Including the Guardian piece. Check out these difficult writers dismissing in advance my critique on the grounds that I must be too simpleminded to understand what they’re talking about. Fine. But when we push our heads up above the swirling currents of tautology, what about “difficult” academic writing do you have a problem with, other than the fact that they respond to critics by defending difficulty. “There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully – say those of Lacan or Kristeva – that the very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer.” If we change the sentence around to read that there are “poetic texts that resist meaning so powerfully – say those of Eliot or Wallace Stevens – that the very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer” – this seems pretty much OK, right? Sure there’s a difference between poetry and philosophy. But many of these theorists work to blur the difference. In a certain way, you could call theory – the theory that here we are labeling “theory” – the application of modernist or postmodernist literary technique to the writing of philosophy. And, of course, just as there were a thousand terrible modernists for every canonical one, there’s still tons of bad theory out there. I agree with that wholeheartedly. There’s more to be said on both sides (in particular, some account of the post-1968 failure of the “revolution” in Paris, which is theory’s primal scene), and sorry to harp on this point, but I think it’s pretty important and would like to hear what the other side has to say… If we could begin to talk about what difficulty is, and what it’s for, I think we could really get somewhere with this…

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 21:31:41 +0000

Michael, sure, it’s subjective, I don’t dispute that. It’s my aesthetic judgment that the stuff I’m calling bad is bad. I don’t claim it’s not.

By: Michael Sayeau

Michael Sayeau — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 20:31:22 +0000

OK Ophelia—not everything’s intentionally obscure. But where do you draw the line? How do you know the difference? From what my students tell me, poetry is often very difficult. And there, if anywhere, the obscurity has to be intentional. What do we make of this? Different projects? Sometimes, yes. In other ways, not at all. Funny, the kids in the modern lit class told me the same thing about some of the books we did there. Even Henry James—sometimes the man doesn’t just come right out and say it. What’s the freaking deal with Strether anyway? What’s up with that? What can we say about this? Is it possible that theory in a certain sense is philosophy gone literary? A hybrid form?

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:54:05 +0000

“But I just think we need to be careful about labeling all “obscure” academic writing “intentionally obscure.” Sometimes, big ideas are just plain difficult, obscure, impossible to write in Newsweek prose etc.” But that’s exactly why I use the phrase ‘intentionally obscure’ – in order not to call all obscure writing intentionally obscure, but to specify, precisely, the intentionally obscure subset of obscure writing, thus eliminating unintentionally obscure writing from the criticism. So I’m not using ‘intentionally obscure’ as one of those phrases where the adverb and the adjective are indissolubly connected – as if it were ‘intentionally-obscure’ or ‘intentionallyobscure’ – but the precise opposite, to qualify the adjective ‘obscure’ with the adverb ‘intentionally.’ I don’t in the least think all obscure writing is intentionally so, nor do I think all obscure writing is bad – to put it mildly. I am talking, specifically, about bad writing, bad writing that is bad because it is intentionally obscure. Other kinds of obscure writing are not included in the indictment. And as for why not tackle Kant and Hegel – well, my German isn’t good enough, for a start, and then they’re both dead and not going to improve, for a finish. But if anyone accuses me of hypocritically admiring Hegel for his obscurity, well, I just brandish Walter Kaufmann’s Goethe, Kant and Hegel, and that puts a stop to that.

By: Michael Sayeau

Michael Sayeau — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:15:34 +0000

Jeffrey, I’m not an expert on Butler’s work, but my personal favorite is probably the Introduction and first chapter of Bodies that Matter (1993). It is very difficult, and might require a certain amount of theoretical grounding from its reader, but I think with patience, folks might find it interesting.

By: Michael Sayeau

Michael Sayeau — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:11:59 +0000

Whew, OK. I’ll say as much as I can for now. 1) First for Rea. “Gender: “a : SEX b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex” The answer is, you can’t, because that’s what gender MEANS.” Come on now, you even gave me definition “b” here. “Typically associated with one sex.” Just as talking about “race” could mean talking about the “traits typically associated with one physiologically differentiated ethinic group” or, perhaps, the physiological markers of race, gender and sex mark the difference outlined in definition “b.” 2) Tim et al. I’m interested in the phrase “intentionally obscure language.” I’ll be the first to admit that in many, many cases academic writing displays “intentional” obscurity, whether this is because of disciplinary demands, the fact that the writer has something less than interesting to say, whatever. And then there is the performative angle—the pedagogical angle to difficulty, which I was trying to get to before. But I just think we need to be careful about labeling all “obscure” academic writing “intentionally obscure.” Sometimes, big ideas are just plain difficult, obscure, impossible to write in Newsweek prose etc. It’s funny—we rarely hear the critics of academic difficulty today go after the dead white males of yesteryear. Hegel’s really no joy to read. I find Kant tough at times too… Nietzsche’s sentences are lucid, but the line of the work as a whole? Forget about it? It IS interesting that the folks that the anti-bad writing people are after are usually queer theorists like Butler or po-co types like Homi Bhabha. Why not play Alice in Wonderland with the Critique of Pure Reason. And for that matter—I’ll bet that many of the critics of Butler et al. are huge fans of modernists like Joyce and Eliot and Proust and Pound and Valery and so on… Answer me this: why is “bad writing” OK in literature, modernist literature, but not all right when it comes to theory? Is the world only too complex to Dickensify for Joyce, but not for Butler, Bhabha, Derrida? 3) Finally, Tim— “Isn’t this exactly the opposite of what one wants in academic writing? When I read a journal article in my field, for example, I don’t expect to have to go through as much work to get to the conclusion as the original researcher did. The whole point is for the researchers to make the disordered and difficult work of their research seem transparent, logical, and intuitive.” Your field have a different end, a different purpose than that of the theorists/philosophers that we’re talking about. If philosophy, a certain brand of it, at base teaches us how to think, there’s not going to be a “transparent, logical, and intuitive” product to hand in for your quick and clean consumption. And you could say this about any body of philosophical work, right? “What we see here is just the shadowy reflection of an ideal elsewhere.” OK buddy! “The world’s really as much inside us as outside.” Wow—that’s pretty deep! “It’s all about the money!” Whatever Karl! Know what I mean? Obviously there are levels of obscurity, but it doesn’t work terrifically well to check your World Book encyclopedia for the entry on Spinoza rather than reading his works, does it now? Whew. That’s it for now. Have at me…

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:58:38 +0000

Dave, you’re right about the way I use the word (let’s defamiliarize it, shall we?) ‘theory’ in the piece – I did that, I think, because that’s what literary ‘theorists’ themselves do: talk about ‘theory’ when what they mean is ‘literary theory and specifically a particular kind of literary theory though which particular kind varies with the speaker and audience but that’s why it’s useful to call it just “theory” because that way one can elide differences like that whenever it’s convenient to do so.’ Richard Dawkins has a fit of rage somewhere about this hijacking of the extremely valuable (and general) word ‘theory’ by one particular discipline, as if they’d invented the damn thing. “Isn’t this exactly the opposite of what one wants in academic writing? When I read a journal article in my field, for example, I don’t expect to have to go through as much work to get to the conclusion as the original researcher did. The whole point is for the researchers to make the disordered and difficult work of their research seem transparent, logical, and intuitive.” That certainly is what I think. I think the way to defamiliarize language is to talk about it directly, not ‘perform’ the opacity by being as opaque as one can possibly be.

By: tim

tim — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:39:41 +0000

“Her texts are very hard to read, but the effort of reading them mirror the effort of rethinking the concepts in play.” Isn’t this exactly the opposite of what one wants in academic writing? When I read a journal article in my field, for example, I don’t expect to have to go through as much work to get to the conclusion as the original researcher did. The whole point is for the researchers to make the disordered and difficult work of their research seem transparent, logical, and intuitive. If one sets out to do all the work oneself, to “rethink the concepts in play” from scratch, one hardly needs long discourses which provide no aid, no shortcuts, no straightening of the path or easing of the way, to add to the burden. The best one can say about such texts is that they are superfluous.