Extracts
Ok so I have to read the Nussbaum essay again, for the ___th time. I have to share some of the particular gems.
Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action.
See also: tweeting seditiously.
Trained as a philosopher, she is frequently seen (more by people in literature than by philosophers) as a major thinker about gender, power, and the body.
Much more. Much much much more. People in literature and people on Twitter.
It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are.
That one makes me laugh every single time.
Nussbaum goes on to discuss Butler’s habit of alluding to an array of “other theorists,” who are incompatible with each other, without ever explaining or giving enough context to let the reader understand the allusions. That’s not how philosophy is done, but it very much is how a certain kind of “Theory” is done.
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.
In other words it’s all showing off. It’s a lazy, empty, pointless exercise in showing off.
Why does Butler prefer to write in this teasing, exasperating way? The style is certainly not unprecedented. Some precincts of the continental philosophical tradition, though surely not all of them, have an unfortunate tendency to regard the philosopher as a star who fascinates, and frequently by obscurity, rather than as an arguer among equals. When ideas are stated clearly, after all, they may be detached from their author: one can take them away and pursue them on one’s own. When they remain mysterious (indeed, when they are not quite asserted), one remains dependent on the originating authority. The thinker is heeded only for his or her turgid charisma.
Turgid charisma. Five stars.
In this way obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on, some complexity of thought, where in reality there are often familiar or even shopworn notions, addressed too simply and too casually to add any new dimension of understanding.
I hate that about it. Really hate it. I hate the fakery, I hate the conceit, I hate the imposition on the innocent readers, I hate the fraud, I hate the power-tripping – I despise it. And she gets away with it to this day.
When Butler’s notions are stated clearly and succinctly, one sees that, without a lot more distinctions and arguments, they don’t go far, and they are not especially new. Thus obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument.
Obscurity plus name-dropping. It wouldn’t work without the name-dropping.
I remember reading this and other things at TNR, ALD, etc. back in the forum days, many of them pointed out by Ophelia. That one essay made me more critical of the type of writing Butler displays and those who practice it, not to mention the ability recognize it more easily. I have probably saved many hours of plodding through bad and pompous writing by learning the value of just skipping it. :)
It’s a slow day at work, so I clicked through and started reading, and…whoa…
That…is an epic takedown…
and
I have so very rarely seen these two important insights stated so clearly or well. The observations go far beyond the particular topic of this essay. I am humbled to acknowledge that I was trained well in this, as regards writing, that is. I may be a poor writer, but I understand the crucial importance of connecting the reader to the ideas as clearly as possible, without ego, and I take this way of thinking into my service as a peer reviewer every single time I pick up a new paper to read.
Nussbaum absolutely exemplifies her own standard of clear exposition, and shows Butler to be the self-absorbed egomaniac that she is.
I’ve never been able to understand the willingness to go from “I can’t make sense of this” to “this must make sense”. Why are people so unwilling to point out that the emperor ain’t got no clothes? Instead, they simper and dissemble and say that yes, it’s all insightful and profound. I mean yes, I understand the self-preservation aspect of conformity and that the proud nail gets hammered down, but seriously.
Nullius in Verba: I’ve never been able to understand the willingness to go from “I can’t make sense of this” to “this must make sense”.
I blame Hegel. Sure, lots of third-rate thinkers after Hegel imitated the master — but the fingerprints on this style of grandiose obscurity are his. The great American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce — who could be obscure as hell sometimes himself, but that’s because he was trying to work out substantive and difficult new ideas, not just puff himself up — once referred to Hegel’s system of thought as “a magnificent mansion, built out of papier mache.” That quote has stuck with me for nearly two decades.
‘Nussbaum goes on to discuss Butler’s habit of alluding to an array of “other theorists,” who are incompatible with each other, without ever explaining or giving enough context to let the reader understand the allusions.’
When I was writing my PhD I’d often put in stuff like ‘as soandso has pointed out, blah blah’ and my advisor would write ‘what EXACTLY did soandso write, and how is what soandso wrote relevant to the argument you’re making here????’
As someone – I wish I could remember who – once put it (from memory): “One advantage of writing clearly is that when you have a stupid idea, the stupidity is obvious, even to yourself”
On a related note, given how many self-appointed representatives of Science and Reason™ have drunk the Kool-Aid on the gender issue, it’s nice to see that Alan Sokal is not one of them (that would be a downer!). He was recently interviewed on the Savage Minds podcast where he made the point that wokism is not so much “relativist” as absolutist and authoritarian, which is more like the opposite of relativism. The relativism is only applied selectively, to dismiss any fact or argument that challenges the prevailing orthodoxy. And as Sokal has argued for a long time, it was only a matter of time before the Right decided that two can play that game. He doesn’t directly blame postmodernism for the rise of Trumpism, but points out that it weakened the Left’s ability to fight back. After all, if nothing is any more or less “true” than anything else, why should the “cultural narrative” that Biden won the election carry any more weight than the equally “cultural” and “constructed” narrative that the election was stolen, Trump won, and by the way climate change is a hoax, vaccines are a pretext for genocide, and Hillary Clinton is running a child prostitution network from the basement of a pizza-parlor in Washington D.C.?
I like to ask the sycophant of the opaque speaker to restate the argument just made in their own words. The response is usually an angry demand that I listen again; it is extremely rare that the sycophant will even attempt to explain the supposed wisdom of the statement that is opaque to me.
This is so true. Analytic philosophy arose in large part as a rejection of continental philosophers’ obtuse obscurantism. Unfortunately, no one thought to make sure that people of a more Continental bent didn’t mangle the project. Analytic philosophy of today is little different from the Continental nonsense that people like Bertrand Russell despised.
I quote Kierkegaard often, because he epitomizes the way that philosophy can mutate into something like a collection of deepities and koans:
And there are “scholars” who devote their careers to studying Kierkegaard. For realz.