| |
|
"One of my problems, though, is that when it comes to literature, at least, people tend to disregard the fact that these theoretical terms were missteps. You still get people writing about base and superstructure, or proletariat and bourgeousie, even though the sane academic world has left these simplistic concepts behind."
Well, we can complain about specific instances of usage and debate wether or not certain terms are appropriate or outmoded or whathaveyou - but that's not the same thing as making a blanket condemnation of anyone who writes in ways that are difficult or challenging - mainly, i have in mind people like Lyotard, Derrida, Lacan, and not the ubiquitous Marxist hacks that have always, for the past century, polluted the academic genepool (and who will almost certainly continue to do so for the forseeable future)
"The ideas can exist prior to the language used to express them
Foucault might disagree with you."
Then Foucoult would be wrong, but i suspect, from what i know of him, that we could both restate and reframe our opinions on the matter using different language in such a way as to make the ideas underlying those opinions appear more mutually amenable.
"But even Judith Butler, in her New York Times rebuttal to the Bad Writing Award, speaks of the ability to translate. If something can be said in terms comprehensible to the average man, why shouldn't it be?"
Generally speaking, if it can, it should be, i agree - but what the "common man" finds comprehensible should not define the limits of human thought - NOR, for that matter, should it be used to set boundaries against where we are permitted to go with the use of language. What about poetry? What about the paragraph length sentences of Marcel Proust? These are often expressions of great depth and beauty that require multiple rereadings and considerable effort to digest, but it would be foolish to dismiss their value offhand simply because, in the hands of lesser writers, those same techniques produce garbage. You have to, as i've said, take the good with the bad.
"And if it can't be said in those terms, why should it be said at all?"
because to limit what we can say to that which is comprehensible to the "common man" would be to limit what we can say to expressions of what has already become mundane, mediocre and commonplace. We would only be able to frame what we know in the same old familiar ways, and could never take a new or fresh perspective on anything without forcing our statements about it into pre-established parlance - and that is pointlessly limiting. To redescribe the familiar in new ways is to look at it from a different angle, and that can often be a very illuminating and revealing way of approaching the world - simply because some guy at the toothpaste factory has trouble adjusting to a new point of view shouldn't automatically place it off-limits.
"We're not in the realm of particle physics, here. What we're describing can be spoken of plainly, but it makes us seem smart if we use a specialist vocabulary."
What makes particle physics special in ways that allow it to be incomprehensible without reproach? String theory, for all it's elaborate and befuddling intricacies, turned out to be largely bunk, after all. Does that mean that all those physicists who examined the possibilities of that theory were just trying to SOUND smart?
"There's certainly a place for new language used to describe new concepts. But too often in theory it becomes dead language used to describe concepts that could be described in simple language. And in the few cases when new language is legitimately used, there's often a failure to clearly translate. At least in my opinion."
Sure, this is true. But no one said the evolution of thought was a perfectly efficient process - we're all only human. Sometimes things just don't translate well - it's a fact of communication - stumblings and missteps, after all. |
|
|
