academic language is often purposely obfuscated

Yup. Lit is the worst.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:50 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

so what is the purpose of literary criticism?

To get tenure.

haha

she's simply using a lot of highly technical terms. even stuff like "totalities" that is a word we all know is still doing specific philosophical work in that passage. the sentence itself isnt the climax of an argument (that i can tell) but basically laying some ground work for what comes later. a lot of her readers know this story already.

I'm not sure the writer knows what a climax is.

Seriously, why don't you guys just all fuck off and die?

― emil.y, Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:41 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cartoonish--truthfully, probably the worst scene in a great film--but somewhat related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6utMlqMCkg

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-(r+o):(+w,_+ A-(r+o)+w,_+*( A-(r+o)+w,_+ A-(r=e+o)+w,_+ A-(r+o)+wri,_+ A-(r+o)
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i feel very sorry for problematic, a perfectly good and useful word so very soiled by a billion undergrads who don't know how to use it properly.

+(o=_)+b

"good work"

she's simply using a lot of highly technical terms. even stuff like "totalities" that is a word we all know is still doing specific philosophical work in that passage. the sentence itself isnt the climax of an argument (that i can tell) but basically laying some ground work for what comes later. a lot of her readers know this story already.

― ryan, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:55 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, this, really. if you happened upon a paper written by an engineer about fluid dynamics, or a paper by a legal scholar expounding on the activity/inactivity doctrine of the commerce clause in constitutional law, or the role of historicism in history, you wouldn't level the charge of 'purposeful obfuscation'...

the people in the zones that butler moves in are all familiar with these terms, have been socialized into the circle. there's an internal vocabulary and language at work here. I don't see why we should resent them for that.

Most objectionable neologism ending in "-ize"

poor bachelard, he meant so well. :(

no I get it, but in my job I worry constantly about neologism creep.

dayo - the difference is you can't rewrite a paper about fluid dynamics to make it readable for 'yr average college grad', but you can rewrite that paragraph to make it much more readable without losing any nuance. I forgot where, somebody did it, I will look 4 it.

I think using problematic wrongly is just hilarious tho

well, not hilarious but mildly funny

eh, but that form of arguing - using syntax in that way - is a standard accepted form of post-structuralist argument. the fact that you may be able to reduce it to simpler sentences doesn't mean that academics in the field should be precluded, or should feel precluded, from using it

the fact that nearly-unreadable syntax is 'the standard' is where the 'purposely obfuscated' comes in tho.

it should be noticed she's telling a story there that is SUPER condensed. I don't know the whole context but it seems to be about the transition from structuralist to post-structuralist critique in Marxist criticism. the specific way she is describing that transitions will, I imagine, have a bearing on her argument.

in other words: context matters, a whole lot. and that context often extends beyond just the essay or book you are reading. we can't re-tell the whole history of the world anew every time we speak.

sorry for typos.

the fact that nearly-unreadable syntax is 'the standard' is where the 'purposely obfuscated' comes in tho.

― iatee, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 10:06 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah but to call it 'purposely obfuscated' is kind of lazy + facile - implying that it's obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation. there are deeper objectives at work here

language obfuscates. period.

my take on this has always been "jargon obfuscates," rather than language as a whole

been reading all this stuff with one eye and 2% of attention, so sorry if that point has been made already

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html

"Wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

humanities academia is a hobby of sorts, so if they have their own CB radio lingo more power to 'em. any idea worth talking about can be expressed in clear, simple language.

Is this language not clear and simple enough for you?

Seriously, why don't you guys just all fuck off and die?

― emil.y, Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:41 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― emil.y, Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:55 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Elementary education can hold its own with anything when it comes to jargon. We used to teach reading; now we facilitate TCLP (Teaching Critical Learning Pathways) cycles.

i love Emerson but he is just as hard to read as Butler!

In order for the proposition "academic language is purposely obfuscated" to be logically proved false, all that is required is a single instance of academic writing that was not obfuscated, as the proposition is existential and therefore encompassing.

In order for the proposition "academic language is often purposely obfuscated" (nb: italics added) to be logically proved false, it would first be necessary to determine an accurate definition of "often". This is, in practise, not possible at present. For the purposes of this paper, however, we shall adopt a measurable standard for "often", so that we shall not be stymied in our research at the very outset. That standard shall be one sentence out of any set of ten sequential sentences.

Next, we encounter a particularly thorny difficulty with the word "purposely", as this speaks to motives and motives are notoriously occult. Establishing an author's purposeful obfuscation would seem to be, if such a thing were possible, even more impossible than an accurate definition of "often", for, as we have demonstrated above, it is possible to circumvent the lack of a definition for "often" by supplying one and allowing the reader to determine the validity of the definition. On the contrary, there is no such easy methodology available in the case of "purposely".

Imagine, if you will, using the simple expedient of asking the author whether a perceived obfuscation was inserted with the purpose of obscuring his/her meaning. The answer, regardless of its nature, cannot be objectively verified by any means of which we are currently aware. This presents a quandry that we have not been able to solve apart from an appeal to pure guesswork.

Research (bibliography follows) seems to indicate that obscurity of meaning is quite common in normal human discourse. Purposeful obscurity is situational, normally occuring where the speaker fears that a more direct and clear meaning will lead to negative consequences.

(to be continued)

it is a little ironic, huh? (xp)

clemenz,

tell me about your worksheets graphic organizers brain frames mind maps

there's a tradition and a dialogue into which post-structuralism slots into - it's supposed to be hard, but I think it's often rewarding as well.

jargon - I'll transpose nietzsche's insight into why jargon is necessary and even valuable

A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

all language is metaphoric btw

i hate how academic language is bound up with idea of "cultural capital" (how's that for some theory). Honestly, it doesn't make you a smarter or better or more worthwhile person to have read Butler any more than understanding Heisenberg. if you dont like it, don't read it. if you are interested in certain questions and ideas that lead to that kind of writing i think you'll find yourself eventually in the company of this kind of writing. it's not for everyone nor does it need to be.

No-one else wants to mention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair ?

lol law review articles are the worst ... i don't think i've ever had to use a law review article once since i've graduated.

goes hand in hand w/ the postmodern paper generator:
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

predominant moral to take from the sokal affair is that sokal's a dick, rly.

ftr i don't think "is the language obfuscated" is a question that was ever really disagreed upon in that other thread

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:38 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what thread was this?

xps oh great the sokal hoax came up

anyway I think this thread treads close to whiney style 'why do people even READ foucault?!' territory so

::stage exit left::

oh no u didn

re HOOS, 'obfuscated' isn't really the right word though, it suggests that there's an explicit something (or an explicit nothing) being hidden under the linguistic smoke and mirrors rather than that there's something actually going on between form and content.

i'm gonna say false

i don't find that chunk of butler particularly dense or unreadable but not particularly... worthwhile for all the work either

she's simply using a lot of highly technical terms. even stuff like "totalities" that is a word we all know is still doing specific philosophical work in that passage. the sentence itself isnt the climax of an argument (that i can tell) but basically laying some ground work for what comes later. a lot of her readers know this story already.

― ryan, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:55 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, this, really. if you happened upon a paper written by an engineer about fluid dynamics, or a paper by a legal scholar expounding on the activity/inactivity doctrine of the commerce clause in constitutional law, or the role of historicism in history, you wouldn't level the charge of 'purposeful obfuscation'...

the people in the zones that butler moves in are all familiar with these terms, have been socialized into the circle. there's an internal vocabulary and language at work here. I don't see why we should resent them for that.

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:59 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is bullshit at least in the specific case of butler

Martha Nussbaum on Judith Butler
http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf

It is difficult to come to grips with Butler's ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are. Butler is a very smart person. In public discussions, she proves that she can speak clearly and has a quick grasp of what is said to her. Her written style, however, is ponderous and obscure. It is dense with allusions to other theorists, drawn from a wide range of different theoretical traditions. In addition to Foucault, and to a more recent focus on Freud, Butler's work relies heavily on the thought of Louis Althusser, the French lesbian theorist Monique Wittig, the American anthropologist Gayle Rubin, Jacques Lacan, J.L. Austin, and the American philosopher of language Saul Kripke. These figures do not all agree with one another, to say the least; so an initial problem in reading Butler is that one is bewildered to find her arguments buttressed by appeal to so many contradictory concepts and doctrines, usually without any account of how the apparent contradictions will be resolved.
A further problem lies in Butler's casual mode of allusion. The ideas of these thinkers are never described in enough detail to include the uninitiated (if you are not familiar with the Althusserian concept of "interpellation," you are lost for chapters) or to explain to the initiated how, precisely, the difficult ideas are being understood. Of course, much academic writing is allusive in some way: it presupposes prior knowledge of certain doctrines and positions. But in both the continental and the Anglo-American philosophical traditions, academic writers for a specialist audience standardly acknowledge that the figures they mention are complicated, and the object of many different interpretations. They therefore typically assume the responsibility of advancing a definite interpretation among the contested ones, and of showing by argument why they have interpreted the figure as they have, and why their own interpretation is better than others.

We find none of this in Butler. Divergent interpretations are simply not
considered--even where, as in the cases of Foucault and Freud, she is advancing highly contestable interpretations that would not be accepted by many scholars. 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. To whom, then, is Butler speaking? It would seem that she is addressing a group of young feminist theorists in the academy who are neither students of philosophy, caring about what Althusser and Freud and Kripke really said, nor outsiders, needing to be informed about the nature of their projects and persuaded of their worth. This implied audience is imagined as remarkably docile. Subservient to the oracular voice of Butler's text, and dazzled by its patina of high-concept abstractness, the imagined reader poses few questions, requests no arguments and no clear definitions of terms.
Still more strangely, the implied reader is expected not to care greatly about Butler's own final view on many matters. For a large proportion of the sentences in any book by Butler--especially sentences near the end of chapters--are questions. Sometimes the answer that the question expects is evident. But often things are much more indeterminate. Among the non-interrogative sentences, many begin with "Consider..." or "One could suggest..."--in such a way that Butler never quite tells the reader whether she approves of the view described. Mystification as well as hierarchy are the tools of her practice, a mystification that eludes
criticism because it makes few definite claims.

suggest reading the rest of that article, i only cp'd the part specifically about writing style but it's really good

Ugh, I once failed a student for writing a summary of a book chapter (about female blues singers of the 1920s) that was almost entirely fancy-sounding nonsense: "These committal-like tenures cut through the article as a salient explanation to their intercourse" was a typical sentence that stands out in my mind. He kept debating the mark, constantly arguing "Ah, but you can bend that definition" every time I showed him the meaning of a word in the dictionary and ultimately arguing that "any paper can be unclear".

xpost to Sokal Affair

(He was a psychology major.)

almost entirely fancy-sounding nonsense

that also failed to answer the questions asked btw

ive started reading it in the tone of a metal gear solid villain crossbred with adam curtis and quite enjoying it. it feels picaresque and wild.

i got a thrill of excitement at
was it the handicraft of the nefarious “positivists”? not by a long shot. the “billiard ball” model of rational choice came from outside economics - but where?

the short punchy answer, fleshed out in this volume, is threefold: it was the military, the rise of the digital computer and its complement “information,” and last but not least, the rise of the political doctrine of neoliberalism.

happy to go along for this ride. it’s the perfect space to be in after reading liu cixin’s novels.

however:

furthermore, the physics inspiration reveals why “perfect foresight” was not the dread albatross that Giocoli conjures for the prewar era.

: |

what book is this

the knowledge we have lost in information: the history of information in modern economics by philip mirowksi and edward nik-khah

the dread albatross that Giocoli conjures

https://gfycat.com/AbleSilkyLabradorretriever

mirowski is bonkers

Is that “dread albatross” some kind of Ancient Mariner reference?

i recommend reading Beatrice Cherrier & co. for non-insane but still critical history of economics

Most likely, just as I assume the title is a T. S. Eliot reference. Such learnèd scholars!

xp

'Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah's The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information is a rigorous, deeply critical, and necessary work.'

i recommend reading Beatrice Cherrier & co. for non-insane but still critical history of economics

― flopson, Wednesday, April 4, 2018 3:10 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for the recommendation, I'm reading a paper of hers now "GUNNAR MYRDAL AND THE SCIENTIFIC WAY TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, 1914–1968" instead of working yay

/the knowledge we have lost in information: the history of information in modern economics/ by philip mirowksi and edward nik-khah

mirowski is honestly a Thomas Bernhard character, in the level of frothing hateful rants

also imo the economists, mathematicians, and operations researchers who developed the theories of information in modern economics in the 20th century were doing foundational work in theoretical social sciences that will survive centuries, and has applications far beyond economics. from quotes i've read i honestly doubt PM even understands a lot of that work

in his course he went on about the unverifiability of string theory and its group-theoretic foundation, science as conventionalism so we have to probe the reasons for the choices of conventions, which point to capital and in particular militarism.

the book reminds me of bernhard, flopson! good call. i’m quite enjoying it, albeit in a sort of pynchon mode, alternative narratives, crazified concepts. but it doesn’t come across as sane. useful to see knowledgeable people itt put a bit more substance to that.

and yes the dread helbatrawss can only be an ancient mariner ref. they use words like ilk and ken as well. it’s distracting, and finally all over the shop. still enjoying it tho.

that piece on Peterson was really well written, a refreshing read

that economics book sounds like something that should be given a dramatic reading

ken is a good word

HI DERE

http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/radu-umbres-blog/cultures-of-academic-disagreement

The impression I had as a participant observer in the anthropological conference was not that of witnessing a conflict. Most scholars in all fields are nice people in conference interaction, but anthropologists are especially nice during presentations. Almost never was a speaker challenged directly in terms of findings or interpretations. At worst, the audience expressed that they did a good job, but it could be even better if they did something else : additionally, not instead of what they had done.

I call this the “agglutinative style of academic argumentation.” An argument is not intended to displace another argument. As anthropologists are fond of saying (and not without a large dose of truth), social reality is complex. Many things are happening at once, real existing societies are different from lab settings. Informers are whole persons with social, political, economic, religious sides, with various positions, motivations, and social embeddings.

Whenever this topic comes up, I'm reminded of What Is Philosophy? by Deleuze and Guattari:

Every philosopher runs away when he or she hears someone say “Let’s discuss this.” Discussions are fine for roundtable talks, but philosophy throws its numbered dice on another table. The best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing. Of what concern is it to philosophy that someone has such a view, and thinks this or that, if the problems at stake are not stated? And when they are stated, it is no longer a matter of discussing but rather one of creating concepts for the undiscussible problem posed. Communication always comes too early or too late, and when it comes to creating, conversation is always superfluous. Sometimes philosophy is turned into the idea of a perpetual discussion, as “communicative rationality” or as “universal democratic conversation”. Nothing is less exact, and when philosophers criticize each other it is on the basis of problems and on a plane that is different from theirs and that melt down the old concepts in a way a canon can be melted down to make new weapons. It never takes place on the same plane. To criticize is only to establish that a concept vanishes when it is thrust into a new milieu, losing some of its components, or acquiring others that transform it. But those who criticize without creating, those who are content to defend the vanished concept without being able to give it the forces it needs to return to life, are the plague of philosophy. All these debaters and commentators are inspired by ressentiment. They speak only of themselves when they set empty generalizations against one another. Philosophy has a horror of discussions. It always has something else to do. Debate is unbearable to it, but not because it is too sure of itself. On the contrary, it is its uncertainties that take it down other, more solitary paths.