Author: Ophelia Benson

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 it that the defenders of ‘theory’ who presumably pride themselves on their awareness of how rhetoric works, on the ways people use language to manipulate each other (I don’t really know what else literary ‘theorists’ would pride themselves on) allow themselves to use such blunt instruments? Like making sweeping statements that are obviously not true, and using the word ‘bashing’ for heaven’s sake, which is such an obvious pejorative that it’s one of the first words we put in the Dictionary. Suggestion for would-be defenders of the brilliance of ‘theory’: be cautious about using the word ‘every’.

There are many theorists who are/were excellent writers — think of Blanchot, for example, or Barthes, or Simone Weil. Just because Lacan wasn’t E.B. White doesn’t mean that what Lacan writes is automatically wrong.

Well no kidding. But who said anything else? The title of the In Focus article is Bad Writing, not Theory. I’m not talking about Lacan or Derrida or Foucault, I’m talkng about their inept imitators. And how did Simone Weil get into the picture? Since when is Simone Weil a ‘theorist’? Do ‘theorists’ get to claim everybody whose work they admire as a fellow ‘theorist’ and then brandish their trophies as evidence that theory is great stuff? If so, just exactly what is ‘theory’ anyway and how does it differ from philosophy? And again, the subject of this particular article is bad writing, not error. It’s perfectly true that a bad writer can still be right (and nor am I suggesting E.B. White as a model, in any case), but if the writing is bad, the rightness will be that much less convincing. And if the writing is deliberately bad, bad for the sake of impressing other fans of bad writing rather than good for the sake of making new fans of good writing and thinking, then my claim is that that’s a bad state of affairs.

Objecting to critical theory on stylistic grounds allows people to dismiss it without actually reading it — and this is the very kernel of ignorance.

Does it? Aren’t people allowed to dismiss it without reading it anyway? They don’t need my permission. And why is it ignorance, indeed the very kernel of ignorance, not to have read critical theory? Is it more ignorant to have given critical theory the go-by for the sake of reading, say, history and sociology and philosophy and economics than it would be to have read critical theory but not history, sociology and the rest? If so, why? And then, there are problems with consequentialist arguments anyway. It’s not necessarily a great idea to claim that one shouldn’t criticise X because that allows people to ‘dismiss’ X – at that rate no one could ever criticise anything, and surely the problems with that idea are obvious enough. And it’s not particularly clear why objecting to critical theory on stylistic grounds would allow people to dismiss it, in any case.

What’s interesting to me is that is we substitute “philosophy” for “theory,” suddenly it’s acceptable to be turgid and dense with respect to your prose. On the unfortunate day when similar articles appear attacking the late Donald Davidson’s brilliant but daunting essays on cognition, we will know the playing field is finally level.

And what’s interesting to me is the way people will keep giving themselves away. There we have it yet again – the attempt to associate ‘theory’ with philosophy or physics or science in general. Let’s try a different thought-experiment – let’s substitute ‘philosophy’ for, say, Scientology, or Objectivism, or Jungian psychology. And thus we see that having a turgid, dense style is no guarantee of having well-founded ideas any more than having a lucid one is a guarantee of having either well-founded or ill-founded ones. Or to put it another way, it’s not particularly acceptable for philosophy to be turgid and dense if it can avoid it, just as it’s not in science writing. And just as guilt by association is not considered a good argument, neither is innocence by association. ‘Theory’ has to defend itself on its own ground; just mentioning Donald Davidson isn’t going to do it.

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 only provides ammunition for those who think such objections are always merely anti-intellectual.

Hmm. Well, maybe, but it looks to me more as if it’s providing evidence (not that any more is needed at this late date) for those who think Theory is a textbook case of The Potentate’s New Garments.

Benson argues that the questions theory raises are dealt with in other disciplines, without bothering to explore those questions, or even hint at what they might be.

True enough, but that’s because I think everyone knows, at least everyone who’s interested enough to read this site. Why bother to specify? It’s only Postmodernists who think they’ve invented ideas that have been around for at least a century or two.

She makes no effort to enter into any complexities of the debate over who is to judge what is “bad writing,” how, and why (is she by any chance dismissing feminism and Marxism without the need to actually acknowledge their existence, let alone attempt to engage with their critiques? Who knows). Benson also does not actually consider any specific terms/jargon (depending on your view) theory uses, in order to investigate whether they really can be substituted for satisfactorily by the language of “common sense.”

Yes, see, here’s where we get down to it. The ‘complexities of the debate’ – because it is all so very complex and difficult and deep, you know, which is exactly why we can’t discuss it without all this heavy breathing. No, it’s true, I don’t get into the debate over who is to judge, because I don’t see any need to. I think we all are, that’s who. I think the badness is self-evident and I think we’re all perfectly capable of judging it. And as for feminism and Marxism – what have they got to do with anything? Here again the solipsism of Theory comes into play. As if literary theorists had some kind of monopoly on Marxism and/or feminism – or even much to do with them, frankly. More borrowed prestige, is more like it.

And then the bit about common sense. That’s just translation, that’s all that is. I’ve talked about translation here before. I didn’t say one word about ‘common sense,’ it’s not a phrase I use, I think it’s just as silly as the letter-writer does. That’s a false and ridiculous dichotomy – the only two choices are either Theory-jargon, or the ‘language of common sense.’ Pu-leeze. Those two items do not exhaust the possibilities. Nope, this is all just the same old blowing smoke – the writing in question is not bad, it’s difficult, and you don’t understand it, because it’s so technical and profound and professional, and you’re conservative, look at the way you don’t so much as mention Marxism and feminism, and you expect everything to be commonsensical ‘cat sat on the mat’ kind of writing, and who is to judge what is bad writing anyway and how and why, there’s a very complex debate about that which it takes a lot of jargon to discuss properly, and you don’t expect physicists to write common sense language so why do you expect theorists to when theorists’ subjects are every bit as difficult as physicists’ subjects no more so because all physicists have to do is count and measure things.

Oh I don’t know, maybe it is dirty pool, it’s too much like shooting fish in a barrel. But it’s so amusing…

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, and in particular mass media like radio, to incite and direct mass murder. But perhaps the matter of blanket pacifism is more immediately relevant. I must say, I felt some of my attitudes to the war in Iraq heaving and shifting in a disconcerting way as I read. If what I’ve been having can even be called attitudes; they’re more like a collection of doubts and qualms. But whatever they are, they’ve done a little shape-shifting since I read for instance the section of Gourevitch’s book that starts on page 150.

The desertion of Rwanda by the UN force was Hutu Power’s greatest diplomatic victory to date, and it can be credited almost single-handedly to the United States. With the memory of the Somalia debacle still very fresh, the White House had just finished drafting a document called Presidential Decision Directive 25, which amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid American involvement in UN peacekeeping missions…PDD 25 also contained what Washington policymakers call “language” urging that the United States should persuade others not to undertake the missions that it wished to avoid. In fact, the Clinton administration’s ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, opposed leaving even the skeleton crew of two hundred seventy in Rwanda…Her name is rarely associated with Rwanda, but ducking and pressuring others to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, was the absolute low point of her career…

And then on page 152 there’s a bit about his visit to the Holocaust Museum…

I saw a group of museum staffers arriving for work. On their maroon blazers, several wore the lapel buttons…inscribed with the slogans ‘Remember’ and ‘Never Again.’ The museum was just a year old; at its inaugural ceremony, President Clinton had described it as ‘an investment in a secure future against whatever insanity lurks ahead.’ Apparently, all he meant was that the victims of future exterminations could now die knowing that a shrine already existed in Washington where their suffering might be commemorated…

It’s so hard to get it right. One is always fighting the last war. One learns the lessons of Vietnam, and then finds that they don’t work very well in Bosnia or Rwanda. Then one wants to apply what one has learnt from Bosnia and Rwanda, and worries that one will get it wrong again, and end up at My Lai. During the Vietnam War people talked much of Munich and appeasement; at Munich, people were thinking of the first World War and what a mistake that was; in 1914, people were thinking among other things of failures to resist German aggression in the past. And so it goes. But perhaps the most chilling thing Gourevitch writes is this:

…on April 21, 1994, the UNAMIR commander, Major General Dellaire, declared that with just five thousand well-equipped soldiers and a free hand to fight Hutu Power, he could bring the genocide to a rapid halt. No military analyst whom I’ve heard of has ever questioned his judgment, and a great many have confirmed it.

Five thousand…