academic language is often purposely obfuscated

I mean the journal articles of other tenured faculty, not Barthes.

so what kind of academic writing are we talking about here - let me guess, humanities?

Ok, ppl are gonna have feelings and whatnot in this thread, but let's not say anything about Calvin & Hobbes that we might regret later.

leading question

problematic poll

so what kind of academic writing are we talking about here - let me guess, humanities?

Yup. Lit is the worst.

a problematizing poll.

points for calvin and hobbes

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 :/

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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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

the common delusion that it is the scholar’s job to articulate/defend “ultimate values,” not exactly something that can be done with rigorous scholarship

can i get a meme of kant photoshopped onto that crying jordan

In the experience of this college professor, Jordan Peterson has had a discernibly negative influence on intellectual curiosity and open mindedness in the classroom https://t.co/K3GVbY4gCx pic.twitter.com/FlvBT6EDiD

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) March 26, 2018

i taught an intro science course and i always got a little pushback when i tried to introduce STS (e.g. week 1 was phrenology and demarcation) but it was more discomfort with new ideas than active hostility based on reddit reading. i wonder what it would be like to teach that course now (4 years later).

The metamorphosis of the detective/ spy in modern literature is not often something the average economist takes time out to contemplate. A little reflection would nevertheless reveal that the “classical” detective tended to be portrayed as a super-intelligent (if a bit quirky) soul who would pick up on the little clues everyone else—and especially the plodding copper—would overlook. From Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes to John Buchan’s Richard Hannay in the twentieth century, it was the burden of the superior individual to piece together the shards of history so as to arrive at the truth concerning guilt or innocence. The same went for spies, from Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op to Ian Fleming’s James Bond. The reader went along for the ride, with the game being to see if you could outguess the gumshoe or spook as to whodunit before the story came to its conclusion. But the superhuman feats of ratiocination began to lose their luster by the middle of the twentieth century, to be replaced by a different sort of spy narrative.

as to whodunnit.
also hannay is clearly not a detective.

this book is v v bad. every single paragraph is aneurysm inducing:

It will probably come as no surprise that we personally do not accept the economist’s imprimatur of The Market as the final solution to the age-old problem of “What is Truth?” Thus do we owe the reader some brief cursory indications of the alternative stance toward truth that governs our principles of selection in this history. Contrary to academic expectations, it may be helpful to note we do not fall back on the Philosophy 101 version of “justified true belief” as the bedrock for our various narrative choices in this history of “information.” It strikes us that the pertinent organizing principles are not timeless monolithic criteria such as those often championed in Philosophy 101 but, rather, they involve acknowledgment that epistemology has meant different things to different groups in intellectual history.

“it will probably come as no surprise that we personally do not accept”

“thus do we owe the reader some brief, cursory” *bitter ironic lols*

“contrary to academic expectations, it may be helpful to note”

“it strikes us” i wish it wd etc

“but, rather”

all the time.

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

if you’re out of your mind.

The basic plot point is intended to induce vertigo: you, the protagonist, have no idea what you are doing, but no one but you are able to do this. The leading man’s meager moiety of information seems insignificant, but opens a crack to view an unseen world, such that he is caught up in forces beyond his ken which render that information (and therefore his life) so critical that the protagonist must risk everything.

this book is mentally damaging.

Typically what gets taught in philosophy 101 is a famous argument for inadequacy of the "justified true belief" definition of knowledge. It could hardly be further off the mark to say that this definition is "championed".

I sat in on a course by one of those guys when I was in grad school. it was pretty weird so I'm not surprised that this book is weird.

wouldn’t mind if the book was a bit weirder tbh. it’s the badness of the writing that’s killing me at the moment. over half the words in any given para could have a line struck thru them.

that section about spy novels does exemplify a thing that you see a bit though. the spy stuff is used to draw an analogy with economics, but they get the detail about spy novels wrong, which makes you wrestle with the analogy.

“once we observe how human agency became diminshed in the modern spy novel, as information becomes reified and hypostasised, it comes as a shock to realise the same thing has happened in neoliberal political theory, and then, with a lag, also in economics.”

that is a totally bogus statement. why are “we” shocked? because of our poorly built observations on the modern spy novel? the analogy was unnecessary and dishonest. it does provide a language and an approach, but makes the whole process of thought unhelpfully crooked.

Based on your choice excerpts, this book is what used to be called "a crock of shit".

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.