In a way I hesitate to make this criticism, because the writer of this letter also wrote a good one on another issue. But I just feel compelled to make this one comment, because people keep saying the same thing, and it keeps being wrong and point-missing.

The author would do good to actually address the issues of trying to articulate what hasn’t been articulated before rather than simply trashing everyone who tries to write on difficult issues.

The trouble with that is that I’m emphatically not ‘trashing everyone who tries to write on difficult issues,’ and I never said I was. I’m ‘trashing’ or rather criticising bad writing, not writing on difficult issues. It’s simply not the case … Read the rest

Oh good, another one. Another nice barrel full of docile, torpid fish.

Why is it that every article bashing “theory” comes from someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about?

Hmm. Why is it that the defenders of ‘theory’ (at least on this site at this time) can’t do better? One, does every article ‘bashing’ (that is to say, criticising) ‘theory’ come from someone who knows nothing of the subject? As a matter of fact, no. I’ve read several articles and indeed books by people who know a lot about it, including some by people who were once keen on ‘theory’ themselves. There is William Kerrigan’s essay in Wild Orchids and Trotsky, for example. And two, why is … Read the rest

Well this is going to be fun. Thanks to the link at Arts and Letters Daily, we’re getting letters about the ‘Bad Writing’ In Focus – agreeing on the whole, but with some dissenters too. Perhaps it’s dirty pool for me to answer them here…?

Nah. Most people who visit the site never even find Notes and Comment, and besides – the question of the way Bad Writers defend Bad Writing is in fact part of the issue. It’s part of what the article was about, and part of what’s wrong with the whole field. So talking about it is part of our (admittedly self-appointed) brief.

This awful article trots out very familiar objections to “theory” in a way which

I’ve been re-reading Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, about the Rwanda genocide and what the US, the UN, Belgium didn’t do to stop it, and what France did to help it along. Or perhaps really I should include the US along with France, since we not only didn’t send troops ourselves, we urged other countries not to send troops either. It’s all, really, exceedingly uncomfortable reading.

And relevant to not one but two subjects we were discussing here yesterday: the inadequacy of blanket pacifism in the face of genocidal tyrannical regimes, and the inadequacy of blanket free-speechism in the face of genocidal regimes or movements that use speech, … Read the rest