Academic Cliche Watch, Minisode 2: Dyer on "Argumentation by Announcement."

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the phrase "I want to argue that . . .", pointing out just a few of the reasons that it's worthless and destructive to the integrity of academic writing.  Geoff Dyer, the genius author of unparalleled books like But Beautiful and Out of Sheer Rage, seems to have noticed the same thing - though not surprisingly, he's responded with a level of subtlety and comprehensiveness that outstrips my modest effort by several degrees of magnitude.

In my defense, he seems to have found the perfect target in Michael Fried's "Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before," which he dissects with a precise brutality that could be paralleled to what Christian Bale did to all those poor women in American Psycho, if it were done in defense of decency and clear thinking.  Geoff Dyer is easily one of the most brilliant cultural essayists alive, right in the league of Joan Didion or . . . well, very few others.  So to be on the receiving end of such a performance from him, while certainly painful, could also be considered receiving a scolding from someone so elevated the rest of us could hardly be expected to even aspire to the same plane.

That said, I have no sympathy for Fried, who I hope is enjoying the comforting sleep of reason in the bed he's made for himself.

Academic Cliché Watch Volume 4: Admitting Defeat

I had a very dispiriting exchange recently on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to.  The main topic at issue was the accessibility of research online and/or through illegal means.  The two separate issues got a little blurred, but my position basically was that it is our job as academics to work for the good of all, and that making our work available as widely as possible was part of our role in society.  Separately from the issue of the survival of institutions such as journals (which I agree are very important), several other discussants took the position that academic research shouldn’t be widely available because it might be subject to misinterpretation or misuse.

This is a position that I’ve seen surface before in the reticence to publicity of a lot of graduate students I studied with.  I always supposed this was simply a lack of confidence that people would grow out of.  Imagine my surprise to find that, quite to the contrary, it is a fear that only becomes formalized and rationalized as individuals of a certain type progress through the academy.

One of the responses was borderline offensive, equating the work of academics with that of the research subjects who we interact with, as deserving of careful protection as the cultural practices of isolated primitive tribesmen.  This is a complete abdication of the responsibility of representation that is inherent to the role of the academy.  It is our job, quite literally, to frame the world carefully and knowledgably for those who want to learn about it.  Saying that the public is somehow ‘unprepared’ for our work reminds me of nothing so much as those who complain that their students aren’t smart enough for what is being taught.  You’ve got it backwards.  It is not the job of your audience to interpret your work in the way you intended – it is your job to make your intention clear and accessible to your audience.

I received a response to this sentiment that dug even further into the depths of blinkeredness.  Essentially it boiled down to: “Yes, it would be great if we could all write material that represented our subjects responsibly, but we don’t live in a utopia like that, so I’m going to continue arguing for limited access to academic work.”  I find this absolutely stomach-turning, as it boils down, not to an admission of defeat, but a desire to eliminate the possibility of failure by getting rid of any condition for success.  “We are imperfect and therefore should not strive to work up to a standard that will withstand scrutiny.”  What this boils down to is professional irresponsibility.

Obviously, the audience for academic work is not often going to be a broadly-defined “general public,” and not all researchers have the skills as writers to push their agenda along those channels.  But consciously talking only to those within the academy is the height of ridiculous self-defeat - the world is full of thoughtful and inquisitive people, often in better positions to make practical use of researchers' insights than other researchers will ever be. We have to be willing to let our work into the world, realizing that it is subject to misinterpretation or misuse, but working to the limit of our various powers to limit that risk.  Anything less is simply cowardice.

Academic Cliche Watch, Minisode 1: "Famous"

"In her famous book, Our Vampires, Ourselves (1997), Nina Aurbach writes that  . . . " etc.

This was the opening sentences of a call for papers I just received.  Maybe I'm just stupid, but I've never heard of this book, and Aurbach's name only vaguely rings a bell.  This is a classic example of some bad academic writing's tendency to make claims rather than arguments for its subject (see also: "clearly," "obviously," "crucially," "not insignificantly," "powerful," ad nauseum.)

The rest of the call was actually really interesting, but think about how this choice of words positions the reader.  Either they agree that the book is famous, and they have gained very little from having their opinion confirmed, or they, like me, have no reason to agree.  In the second case, they may either a) experience a grad-school-like pang of insecurity and scurry off to catch up on some book that an anonymous emailer claimed was famous, b) pass through the phrase gaining little from that extra F word, or c) take the writer themselves for someone so wracked by insecurity that they don't feel comfortable citing a book without simultaneously claiming that it's "famous."  In none of these scenarios does the claim that a book is famous add value.

Academic Cliche Watch, Vol. 3: "Intervention"

"Woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end.As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification." - Judith Butler, Gender Trouble


"Intervention" was in common usage in academia before it became an MTV-sanctioned watchword for the dramatized fight against addiction, but even without that post-facto reappropriation (there's a word for another day), this is one of the most annoying terms in the critical theory lexicon. Why? In a nutshell, it implies a vision of the critical theorist as an activist which, I think, simultaneously inflates and undercuts the stakes of the project.

"I actually did that."

To intervene implies to stop something in progress - to leap to the defense of a battered spouse, or to shove a child out of the way of an oncoming bus.  Of course, in theoretical usage, the "intervention" is usually against a linguistic convention, a social practice, or a pattern of thought that the critic thinks is harmful - but the word is intended nonetheless to convey that sense of immediacy, urgency, and engagement.  I'm willing to bet that Judith Butler was the single greatest force in spreading the term around, and as in most such cases, she remains one of a very few whose use of it can be defended.  Her work actually did end up being this sort of abrupt interruption, becoming a touchstone for a politicized feminism that then went out and did some very direct things with it.

Those who have come since have generally hoped for a similarly spectacular, direct impact - but the inconvenient truth is that claiming to be making an "intervention" is more a quantitative than a qualitative claim. That is, it implies that one believes one's own work should - perhaps even that it will - have the kind of deep, short-term social impact that Butler's did.  Inevitably, most of these "interventions" have come up short, turning the word into self-important ash in its users' mouths.

But is the picture of critical theory's impact implied by the term "intervention" even the one we should be committed to?

Academic Cliche Watch: "I want to argue that . . ."

Today I was reminded of another huge pet peeve of mine - academics who preface what they're about to say with "I want to argue that . . ."  It's a problem with two parts - it's both obviously annoying and, more subtly, anti-intellectual.

Like "In particular ways," "I want to argue that . . ." is completely unnecessary verbage that gets in the way of the meat of a statement.  If you cut the phrase out of any sentence that it begins, the thrust of the sentence doesn't change.  To wit:

• "I want to argue that Avatar provides a completely unearned and politically counterproductive catharsis for white, Western guilt over colonialism and racist exploitation."

Vs.

• "Avatar provides a completely unearned and politically counterproductive catharsis for white, Western guilt over colonialism and racist exploitation."

The comparison makes clear that while "I want to argue that . . ." adds nothing to the content of the first sentence, it does have a function - to make the claim seem more cautious and hedged.  It's the academic equivalent of "Well, this is just my opinion, but . . ."  The problem is that if you want to be a responsible academic, you can't hedge, soft-pedal or whisper.  You have to stand behind your claims, and "I want to argue that . . ." signals that you're unwilling to fully commit.  In short, the phrase is a way for intellectual cowards to shirk responsibility for the words that dribble out of their mouths and pens.

Academic Cliche Watch: " . . . In particular ways."

Note: As of 8/3/2013, I'm out of academia!  Temporarily! Maybe!  Check out my new blog, focused on my interests in weird fiction, experimental music, and generally all things so post-academic that they're not academic at all, over at Blownhorizonz.com.

I consider myself almost as much a "writer" as I am a "researcher." I do a lot of journalistic writing on the side, and have accomplished some moderate to big things in that world, including being selected for a major non-academic collection (which you should totes purchase). This makes me at best an oddity in the academic world, which is broadly and justifiably notorious as a haven for bad writers and writing. Let me briefly pre-empt the inevitable line about how academic writing is necessarily bad because philosophers are trying to "challenge the language." I acknowledge that some writing seems 'bad' mostly to people who haven't bothered to learn the specialist language, but it's undeniably true that there are many specific bad habits and lazy gestures that have infected academic writing (as well as some institutional structures that help foster them).  As people whose job it is to increase human knowledge, we should be ashamed of these professional failures, and rather than falling back on boilerplate defenses, we should be working, as individuals and as a community, to improve the level of our writing.

One big way we can do this is to become more conscious of the cliches that litter academic writing. These are distinct from jargon, which needs to be used carefully but is nonetheless an important part of writing within any specialty.  (For my money, Lacanians are the most frequently and undeservingly bashed for using a necessarily dense jargon.) Jargon condenses a whole discourse into a single word, and when used judiciously, and with a consciousness of audience, makes writing richer.  A cliche, by contrast, is the performance of a conventional linguistic gesture that has actually lost whatever original meaning it might have had, a verbal twitch that has more to do with sounding like an academic than actually thinking carefully.

So, this is the first installment of an ongoing series highlighting specific cliches of academic writing that I think deserve to be banned from the lexicon forever. There's a wealth of these that enrage and frustrate me, utterly empty phrases that cloud minds and swell word counts to absolutely no effect. Since the journals are providing new bad writing all the time, I'm hoping the topic will keep me angry and productive basically forever.


First on the chopping block: “X does Y in particular ways.”