David Thompson sums up an interesting excerpt from a Keith Windschuttle lecture critical of literary and social theorists this way:
“Unproblematic prose†and “clarity of presentation†are regarded by some – guess who – as the “conceptual tools of conservatism.†Thus, if you prefer arguments that are (a) comprehensible and (b) able to withstand scrutiny, you must be a conservative, i.e. The Enemy. On the other hand, if you denounce such bourgeois trifles, you’re “radical†and very, very sexy.
What long-time readers of this site might find ironic about such an attempt on the part of poststructuralist jargoneers to validate “the obfuscatory turn” (to coin a phrase) is the history my leftist critics have of seizing on the length of my sentences to prove my desire to hoodwink.
Yet here, the argument seems to be that such labyrinthian constructs are indexical to a complexity of thought — which should, for all intents and purposes, position me, notorious butcher of simple, minimalist syntax, as among their radical intellectual gurus.
Which, in that case, BOW BEFORE YOUR LEADER, BITCHES!
Of course, I don’t buy any of this nonsense about bourgeois stylistics as a predictor of thought any more than I buy into the equally absurd idea of, say, a “Black aesthetic” that can somehow be infused into prose and manifest itself in a form of textual ontology that at once separates it from competing prose and authenticates it. Because to my way of thinking, the only thing inherently complex about complex sentences is the complexity of the prose itself, which is a structural artifice, and as such has no necessary connection to complexity or profundity of thought; similarly, though, there is nothing about complex sentences that employ specialized jargon that is inherently obfuscatory. Just as you’re likely to find specialized terms in white papers on aerodynamics, you’re likely to find, in the work of literary theorists and social theorists, specialized terms that are quite specific to the disciplines and reference a shared vocabulary between the writer and his audience.
The problem comes — as both Thompson and Windschuttle would likely agree — only when one begins to conceptualize the use of specialized jargon and obscurantism as an end in itself. And when literary and social theorists begin arguing that their ability to turn lucidity into “problematizing the discourse” is both a critique of middle class mores and a simultaneous “performance” of a radical political statement (whose referent its own construction and deployment), then what they’ve really done is turned an unfortunate penchant for eschewing intellectual rigor into a justifiable (and, indeed, laudable) show of anti-establishment “deconstruction” whose virtue rests precisely in its rejection of precision as a desirable component of cultural discourse.
— Speaking of which, here: ;;;;….,,,:::, use these as you see fit.
T;w:a.t,w;a:f.f,l;e–as it were.
You had me from “Hello”.
Those semicolons won’t hold forever. If that thing keels over, the whole town is finished.
“The problem comes  as both Thompson and Windschuttle would likely agree  only when one begins to conceptualize the use of specialized jargon and obscurantism as an end in itself.â€Â
Yes, Thompson agrees. The issue for me is whether the jargon is useful and necessary, if only to a small number of readers, or is merely an attempt to intimidate and suggest profundity where none exists. Or if it’s an attempt to graft tendentious political meaning onto substandard art. Having ploughed through a great deal of this material to very little benefit, I’m inclined to suspect the latter is a much more common motive.
The art critic Jonathan Jones once referred to the art world’s increasing reliance on poststructuralist jargon as “a facsimile of thinkingâ€Â, driven by insecurity and an envy of the ‘hard’ disciplines:
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2007/02/art_bollocks_re.html
This is my favorite example of somebody making fun of this phenomenon.
Explained
Here’s hoping my html-fu is no that inferior.
This brings to mind Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”, for some reason.
Sorry, I have to add my favorite quote
And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths — the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.
Yes. I think Jeff Goldstein would likely agree.
Even if he doesn’t have a “preview” button.
Ooooo, look, a shiny new comma.
WOW!!!!
It has a “D” mint mark.
This one goes right into the book.
It’s all a lot of verbal penis-envy. Except instead of a penis, they envy being right.
Which is basically the same thing anyway.
I’m a fan of Intentionalism – when someone’s prose is LABYRINTHINE, overly convoluted and so opaque and filled with specialized (or even outright invented) jargon as to be completely impenetrable, I assume that the author INTENDED to obfuscate.
Usually because they’re “full of it”, I’ve found.
I wonder if it’s not envy of being able to communicate. Writing is work; writing well is hard work. It’s also something that can be made easier with natural talent; maybe those without the talent are just trying to change the standards so their lack isn’t a problem.
Clear thought is reflected in clear language. Who pays any attention to these academic twats anyway?
“Who pays any attention to these academic twats anyway?â€Â
Unsuspecting students?
I remember Sokal’s devastating satire, published in the belly of the beast. I applaud his excellent work because in the end, if you and your debating foe cannot even agree that an ashtray will fall to the floor if released in mid-air, there’s really no possibility for resolving the issue.
Bingo.
It’s part of a more general trend that is becoming a real problem. I’ve forgotten who it was who first brought forward the notion that “Art shocks the sensibilities.” Well, so it does — fine art is genuinely confusing when first seen; the artist has seen or felt something that’s off-axis to everyone else’s perceptions and depicted it in such a way as to make that viewpoint comprehensible, and the result is disorientation as the new viewer’s perceptions swing into line. If you’re a hack or wannabee artist it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that this relationship works both ways, that anything that shocks the sensibilities is art. Creating fine art is hard, and dependent on mental states that are, umm, nonstandard, and as a result artists tend to be obsessive oddbals — but not all obsessive oddballs are artists, and people pretending to be obsessive oddballs by, for instance, reading up on Picasso and attempting to match his behavior patterns are even less artistic.
Closely allied is what I call the “engineering approach to Art”. A true artist introduces new methods, new viewpoints — the words nowadays are “tropes” and “memes” — to the general discourse. Art critics analyze and point them out, or at least the good ones do, and the technique becomes something others can copy. Hacks can then create a simulation of art by copying the tropes of the genuine artists, just as an engineer can create a new machine by ordering and assembling parts from a catalogue. Probably the single most outstanding example of that I can think of at the moment is the S-curve every book on artistic photography will tell you is an indispensible part of a Good Picture, especially a landscape; and, if you go to a photography exhibition by students, hacks, and/or wannabees, you will see variations upon sinuous S-curves disappearing into the perspective background until they’ve become so boring that they actively repel the viewer rather than “leading the eye into the picture” and may, to the suggestible, induce a sort of under-the-breath sibilance: sssss….
Academics are by definition analyzers and documenters; they are perfectly capable of detecting the things that went to make up a piece of art and duplicating it — but they are constitutionally incapable of creating new art because of the mindset that put them in academia in the first place; the students they teach become stuck in the rut of duplicating art rather than creating it, and turn to titillation and shock because they have no other means of reaching (as they believe and are taught) their audience. Unfortunately for them we have the phenomenon of “habituation”. People become accustomed to whatever is common in their environment, and don’t so much tune it out as put it in Pratchett’s Fourth Category (1-things to eat, 2-things to mate with, 3-things to run away from, 4-rocks). Lenny Bruce shocked his audience by using profanity. A modern-day comedian whose entire act consists of chanting “fuckshitcrap” over and over is just boring. What is left is engineered art, assemblages of things from a list cribbed from the work of true artists. It might as well be the Grainger catalog. And Ulysses is a tour de force — but, as has become evident, it can only be done once. Eighty thousand words of stream of consciousness without punctuation or capitalization is just boringly impenetrable, let alone the fact that 99.9% of the perpetrators have nothing to say in the first place and can only string together “reference to Father’s cruelty: direct, cat. no. 994732, $4/doz; oblique, cat. no. 9994737, $.50 ea.”
The result is that artists, real artists, aren’t doing anything academia recognizes as Art. Jeff Foos is an artist; his modified automobiles will be in museums, oohed and aahed at by wannabees who try to use his methods and tropes on spaceships, when today’s “sculpture” has been melted down, twice, to make toilet-tank valves. All the poets have moved to Nashville and/or LA to write song lyrics, and the pictorial artists and playwrights are doing TV ads. The one thing you can depend upon today is that if it’s advertised as Art, it ain’t.
Regards,
Ric
The made me read this in liberal arts college. It had nice pictures. And also someone put fur on a teacup. How zany is that?
*They*
There are also some with the talent who seem to misunderstand or perhaps misapply the standards. Look at architecture for example. The desire to reach the (misunderstood) goal of something breathtaking often manifests itself as something breathtakingly ugly.
Well done Ric.
Exactly what I was complaining about. The goal of the wannabee-artistic architect was to create something that would be taken as Art, but all he/she can do is shock because he/she doesn’t have anything beautiful in mind.
Consider Mies van der Rohe. His creations — glass curtain walls skinning minimalist structure, with no ornamentation — were beautiful and shocking in the context of the time because they were sitting next to ormolu and intricacy. The nth such glass box in a row is just boring and repetitive, the exact analogy of trying to duplicate Joyce. One of the major drawbacks of the titillation approach to Art is that even when it works, it can only be done once.
Regards,
Ric
I am always amazed when I meant someone who can really stack it to new heights. Salute!
Fur on a teacup? Any college student can do that. All it takes is a bit of time. Heck, I remember my roommate’s discovery of some strange crystals we named “Mountain Dew Nuts”.
“I’d never have a thesis adviser whose writing I could understand.”
— Groucho Derrida
One of the most frustrating things for me back when I was more involved in the local art scene was trying to explain to the local coffee house crowd that if art or poetry couldn’t be defined, as most of them asserted, it then couldn’t exist. If you cannot define a word, it has no meaning. The absurdity of a poet who couldn’t define poetry seemed obvious to me, and was totally oblivious to them.
It the substitution of a pseudo-profound nod to inscrutability and ineffability in exchange for having to do the hard (and often tedious) work of explication based on a vigorous attempt to reconstruct the meaning of the utterance / text.
Aaaahahahaha! Post of the day.
This would be the literary version of say…”Weekend At Bernie’s II” I’m guessing.
Oh hooray!
I hope JD isn’t looking while I stash these semicolons.
On a more serious note, this academic gobbledy-gook is so far from actual English that I’ve begun to think of my ability to utilize it as code-switching. It’s my other, other, other foreign language.
driven by insecurity and an envy of the ‘hard’ disciplines:
In my day they called it bullshit. Antisubstantialism. Hey, I like that. Am I an intellectual now?
Jeff Foos is an artist; his modified automobiles will be in museums, oohed and aahed at by wannabees who try to use his methods and tropes on spaceships, when today’s “sculpture†has been melted down, twice, to make toilet-tank valves.
Ric,
I believe that you meant Chip Foose. I publish some auto related web sites and have spoken to many designers that work, in-house, for the major automakers. Perhaps you’ve noticed that aftermarket body kits and other modifications rarely add to the original design. That’s because the men and women who are good enough to work for the car companies are really, really good at what they do. Remarkable skills to give inanimate objects the ability to evoke an emotional response. The folks working for aftermarket companies rarely have that level of talent or skill.
Foose, on the other hand, was recently hired by Ford as a consultant. That means he isn’t just good, he’s very very good.
It also means that Foose has established himself as a brand name. A brand that has more cachet in the American market than the traditional design houses like Pininfarina, Bertone and ItalDesign/Giugiaro.
Jeff,
Have you ever read Impostors in the Temple: The Decline of the American University by Martin Anderson?
He devotes a lot of attention to the way academics create jargon to both obfuscate and keep the riffraff out.
Bozoer Rebbe, of course you’re correct, and I apologize to Foose for getting his name wrong. I don’t think that invalidates my point, though, and you’re quite right that the people who do design for the car companies are themselves pretty special. I never really cared all that much for Pininfarina or Bertone, but Giugiaro built some nice cars. YMMV.
The great art of the past was overwhelmingly done for patrons who paid for it, and wouldn’t pay if it didn’t meet their standards. People who design cars, or toothbrushes, or the bottles consumer products come in are rewarded and challenged in the same way. Anton Loewy (hope I got that one right!) was more of an artist than any thousand self-elected wannabees.
Anecdote: when the Wall came down, the German government commissioned art for the public places in the former DDR. In Jena, the result was cliché tangles of steel beams welded together and distributed around the Kirkplatz. A friend made up some stickers to affix to the sculptures as clarification: “Achtung! Kunst!” It warmed my heart to know I’m not the only Philistine in the bunch :-)
Regards,
Ric
The term “obfuscation” implies that an idea is being hidden behind impenetrable prose. However, the ugly truth behind most of academic writing is that there’s nothing to obfuscate in the first place. No thought, no ideas, no concepts: just a lot of nothing.
Which is precisely the point of nihilism. Nihilism offers all kinds of freedom to do whatever the hell you want as long as it destroys instead of edifies. It’s a twisted kind of tabula rasa that only accepts the destruction of the slate, thus preventing anything meaningful, that is to say, truthful to come to light.
They have to resort to obfuscation because they got nuthin’. Besides, the point of being an academic, for all too many, is to belong to The Club of the Cool People. Windschuttle wasn’t exaggerating when he said that “today’s typical postmodernist academic would rather be declared to have a communicable disease than labeled ‘middle class’ or ‘conservative'” Only I’d say that there’s nothing they wouldn’t prefer to being labeled middle class or conservative. Nothing.
Their whole identities are tied up in being In The Know, beyond stylish, elite, unsurpassed in wit, taste, and intelligence. The jargon is not at all meant to elucidate or be a convenient means of expressing ideas, it’s meant to identify who belongs in the club.
I heard too many empty lectures, read too many meaningless texts, sat in on too many useless class discussions to think that there ever was anything behind it all.
Check this out: we were in a feminist Hispanic literature class (required, or I’d have opted out). About halfway through a lively discussion on the text, someone casually said, “of course, I haven’t read the text, but come on, admit it, no one else did, either.” And you know what? No one had. (I had read a chapter or so; it was dreck.) They were blathering on about the issues in the text without even having read it!
And that was par for the course in the “progressive” classes. The text under discussion was impenetrable, the discussion did not elucidate, and the students were intimidated either into silence or, if they had the gift of mimicry, to spew back the jargon in such a way as to sound like they meant something.
But they didn’t. It was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen, and no one had the courage to call them on their BS. I tried once, but no one seemed to understand what I was saying.
Design sucks.
Architecture is the worst these days, if it’s not cookie-cutter, it’s incomprehensible for the sake of incomprehensibleness.
I’m no fan of Chip Foose’s designs, being rather cookie-cutter themselves, but at least there’s a style there. Most factory vehicles (Chrysler being the odd exception, though they’re slipping) are almost devoid of style – it’s as if a designer designed the car, and then a committee stepped in a smoothed over all the identifying details. Which is why the aftermarket is as big as it is, though less so for American cars, in terms of appearance changes.
There was once an article in a car magazine that compared the Testarossa, The Porsche 911, and the Toyota Supra. The numbers weren’t that far apart. The biggest difference was in what the reviewers called the “language of design,” a line here, a vent there, a type of shifter handle, a texture, an angle… The Ferrari and the Porsche had definite voices, definitive styles – the Supra was muted, blended, and its voice could not be “heard” over the others.
Even though I’m not fond of Foose’s designs, if Ford follows Chrysler (and perhaps drags Chrysler back into the idea) in having a “clear voice” in their designs, that’s a good thing.
Then it will be time to slap a few architects around.
I was looking at new cars recently, and one of the automakers — Toyota? Honda? — struck me as being the exact same car, just in slightly varying sizes. Nothing stood out as worth my time.
Ric–Raymond, I believe. Merovign–some of what makes Foose so good lies in the details. Let me know when you’re ready to slap some architects, I’d be happy to help with that little project.
Rob–Probably Toyota. The Corolla and Camry are pretty clearly siblings. Even the tiny Yaris looks remarkably similar.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fnord.
Mountain Dew Nuts
I had those once, you never want to drink that much Mountain Dew.
And I’m so glad my penchant for overusing commas makes me smart and not the stoned kid who almost failed 7th grade English. So I’m not going to fight the power.
I blush to admit that when I first started reading the posts here on intentionalism, there were some words I didn’t know. However, their meaning was clear from the context, and I soon learned enough so that I could understand what was being said immediately. That would not be possible if J.G. did not write clear sentences, no matter what some of the detractors of those types of posts have said. As soon as some calls it obfuscation, I know I have encountered someone whose opinion is suspect.
I am cool with the long sentences as well. Again, it isn’t difficult to follow the meaning, but I am at an advantage over many in that I read a lot every day, and have all my life. Most everything gets easier with practice, and that includes reading.
Bozoer —
Haven’t read it. Might have to give it a go, though.
Ah, late to the fun as usual.
(1) Poetry – a song without music, telling much in a few words. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” opens with a galloping cadence; then “Flashed all sabres bare! Flashed Turning in the air!” is the shock of the collision between the two forces. The final cadences of “Out of the jaws death back from the mouth of hell” is the Light Brigade’s retreat. (My opinion).
(2) Architecture, etc. All I can say is that with 10,000 years of inspiration, few architects can now create any songs out of stone (and glass and metal and brick). The Comerica Tower in Detroit is a post WWII building, and yet it is beautiful and impresive in its own right; Gothic, but not quite, soaring; it doesn’t reject the past but isn’t of it.
(3a) Art, fine. Years ago while visiting my parents in Bradenton we went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. There was a tour from the Smithsonian, ‘Art of the Gilded Age’. There was a portrait of a lady (I forget her name or other details) yet it was very compelling. The representation was a middle aged woman, yet the power and strength of the subject came through – she was not one to trifle with. The history (as I recall it) was that she was the eldest child of her family, they were orphaned (though very well-to-do) and she became responsible for her siblings. She was ill but still made sure that all was properly done, even taking her sibilings to Europe when, due to a back condition, she had to be strapped to a board (IIRC) and was in great pain. But she never complained and did all that she could for them. That was art. The story I read confirmed what the painting transmitted – strength, character, will, refusal to bend – ever.
(3b) Art, fine. The artist is to be a translator, to translate what he or she sees (or feels, whatever) to the audience. To look at much fine art today the artist either doesn’t have much to say or what he or she has to say isn’t worth repeating. Finally,
(4) What Jeff finished with: “…an unfortunate penchant for eschewing intellectual rigor into a justifiable (and, indeed, laudable) show of anti-establishment “deconstruction†whose virtue rests precisely in its rejection of precision as a desirable component of cultural discourse.” This however, leads us to ask what is the purpose when the establishment (and what are tenured professors and leading critics but the establishment in their fields) resorts to this kind of obscurity? My conclusion is that they are frauds and are ashamed if anyone finds them out. Not good, eh?
If I may add a codicil to the above: The critics of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the “Academic Style”, who rebelled against those strictures, are now the “Academic Style”; so anything that goes against them would be the new radicals, correct?
Long live the perpetual revolution, revolution for its own sake, means as opposed to ends. Or; How to Make Change Boring. I believe it was John Kenneth Galbraith who said “When the facts change, I change my opinion; what do you do?” That must haunt the nightmares of all pedestrian academics. Much like in Dorothy Sayers “Gaudy Night” where a historian had a thesis and then discovered a letter that disproved the entire thesis; his fondness for his own thesis led to him stealing the letter; and when the facts came out and ruined him he commited suicide, which led to his widow perpetuating all of these acts of vandalism against a woman’s college (a female Don had discovered the fraud). What does a mediocre academic do when the facts change, and they cannot change course having too much invested in the course charted rather than investing in the academic truth no matter where it leads? (obvious rhetorical question answered here) It leads to obscuring things, hiding arguments against, and attacking those who disagree.
Last PS (I swear!) I have always connected “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (in my mind’s eye and ear) when I’ve heard the song “Wipeout”. The gallop, the cannon fire, the final collision, and the retreat.
John Maynard Keynes.
Recently, I was in Bayeux, in Normandy, and toured the Bayeux cathedral – which dates to the 11th Century. Romanesque architecture still inspires almost a millenia later.
I love the overhaulin’ show Chip Foose does!