Academic Speak

I haven't had a chance to read others' responses yet, so this may be a bit repetitive:

In French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, Cusset describes Sokol and Bricmont’s late twentieth-century attack on the “veritable intoxication with words” they found to be so prominent in French Theory (quoted on p.2). These two physicists posed the argument that, “if the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing” (quoted on p.3). These comments may seem to be nothing more than the reactionary response of two scientists to French theory’s attempt to undermine and deconstruct both “unified knowledge and . . . the unviolated ‘truth’” (327), but I believe they point to a larger issue. Cusset’s account of Sokol and Bricmont’s criticism of French theory reminded me of a recent conversation I had with two fellow graduate students concerning the impenetrability of Deleuze’s writings. One student recounted her experience of attempting to find meaning in a sentence from one of her courses’ weekly readings; after re-reading and reflecting on a passage from Deleuze, she finally resorted to asking her professor for clarification—clarification which he was unable to provide. I suggested to this student that I have never been able to understand Deleuze, and a third student made a comment to the effect that anyone who says they understand Deleuze is either lying or deluded. I found the conversation reassuring, because it indicated to me that other highly intelligent individuals with advanced education have the same problems with theory that I do; however, it made me think about the broader question of the importance of clear communication, particularly when it comes to theory.

In The Examined Life, Peter Singer asks if we can make our academic studies more relevant to the important questions of the day; I would ask, if our goals is to make academic studies more relevant to the world outside academia, is it not necessary to make our scholarly work more accessible to the public? I was raised (in a highly intelligent and well educated family) to believe that one should “never use a dollar word when a dime word will do,” and although I recognize that “dollar words” (and theory too!) are often not only needed but extremely useful, I am nevertheless suspicious of what Cusset describes as a “jargon-filled, decontextualized approach” to writing and speaking about theory (xiv). I raised this issue in my class on Performance Theory and Literary Analysis: I complained that some of the theorists we were reading employ what I described as the “intentionally obscure” language suggestive of intellectual posturing rather than of complex ideas. Another student responded with the comment that theory is often inherently difficult to understand because language is an insufficient tool to convey particularly complex ideas; the obscurity, he argued was not intentional, but unavoidable. This was something I had not considered. Is language inherently Sisyphean? Is clear, concise communication something towards which we strive but which we never achieve? Perhaps obscure prose facilitates the kinds of “felicitous misreading[s]” that Cusset values (337). Can an “incomprehensible” text allow for a kind of performative creativity that fosters the development of new ideas and new approaches? Or does it simply exclude those who live, work, and read outside the academic discourse?

Perhaps my issue with obscure academic prose can be redirected towards a question of audience. I was once told that, when writing a research proposal for a SSHRC application one should imagine one’s audience as an “educated lay-person,” that is, an intelligent and educated individual whose area of specialty is outside of (and perhaps completely removed from) my own area of studies. I believe that academics should write for an “educated lay-person” even when they are in fact writing for their colleagues in the same field. I think one of the reasons why many people regard academia as aloof professors reading and writing in an ivory tower because, really, that’s how we write. If we, as academics, could shift academic discourse and scholarship to make it more accessible, our work would be more relevant to the world outside academia.