A failure to be talked to

[alias_sqbr]

I have finally given up on "Talkin' up to the white woman: Indigenous women and feminism" by Aileen Moreton-Robinson (as recced to me by fire_fly before my panel. She did say I might find Sister Girl an easier read!). It's not that it was bad, it's just that I am pretty much incapable of reading more than about 10 pages of academic humanities theory without my eyes glazing over and my brain dribbling out of my ears. Which is a pity, since afaict there's very little indepth discussion of race in Australia that isn't written by and for humanities academics, luckily at least some of it is in the form of short essays.

Still, if you are capable of reading humanities academic prose and have an interest in the subject it is, afaict, pretty good if not made of sparkling prose (keeping in mind that I only got through the introduction, conclusion, and a few pages of chapter 1)

In general I find myself annoyed at the yawning chasm that often gapes between the low level spoon-fed explanations given in layman's guides to a subject and the dense, impenetrable, jargon-filled prose of professional discussions of it. Afaict a lot of the time the only way to bridge the gap is to do the relevant university degree or equivalent (and possible also postgrad, I have 2/3 of a physics major and still don't understand physics papers) which is a pretty big ask. I mean I'm not sure it's anyone's fault or what you can do about it, most interested non-experts seem either happy enough with the Dummies Guide version or dedicated enough to bring themselves up to speed, but it does make life difficult for indecisive Renaissance-women such as myself who would like to have a slightly better understanding of lots of subjects without having to become an actual expert.

It's especially unfortunate when this gap appears with subjects like race where it is actually important for regular people to be able to understand what's going on. A lot of the time there will be attempts to bridge the gap, thus all the attempts to make politics/economics/health/feminism etc understandable to your everyday joe (by the government or other interested parties) and there's a great continuum of levels of race discussion in America, but not so much here except occasionally in broader discussions about other subjects (ie there's a number of blogs like mine which talk about race every now and then, but I can think of a total of two where it's the main focus) So on the whole would-be aussie anti-racists are stuck with either the incredibly bland "Lets all hold hands and be nice to each other!" government line, or the unfocussed mishmash of popular culture and whatever their friends happen to be talking about, or academic papers. (Or reading about stuff overseas, which is certainly a good place to start but not much good for specifics)

Admittedly, I think I am particularly bad at reading academic writing compared to other people with the same intelligence and knowledge, it caused me no end of pain during my Phd (and also made me vow to make my writing comprehensible. Which it is, imo, if anyone's interested in learning about sporadic simple group recognition algorithms...(*))

EDIT: To quote kadeton below, who makes a point I forgot to: "I see it as an unfortunate trade-off. You can express a concept with great depth and complexity using high-level technical language but make it inaccessible to all but experts in the field, or you can express it shallowly and simplistically but make it accessible to everyone". The main way I made my thesis more accessible was pretty much by turning the first third into a short introductory textbook. And yes, most people are happy with one or the other. I just personally find it annoying when I want something in between :) That said I think a LOT of academic writing is much more opaque than it needs to be, partly because being smart doesn't mean you're a good writer, and partly because of various unfortunate aspects of academic culture. (I mean, if there had been more decent introductory textbooks on the subjects I was writing about, I would have just referenced them...)

Also: I'm not saying ALL of race/health/economics etc needs to be made accessible to the public, especially not the more abstract theory, but I think these are subjects people need (and want) a certain basic, practical understanding of in order for society (and individuals) to function well.

Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but I had an urge to meta and all the other possible subjects are WAY too much for my brain today. And now I may go try to eat something without setting myself on fire.

(*)No this is not my thesis :P

Comments

[nico-wolfwood.livejournal.com]

Yes, i have to admit that one of the main reasons I got into Anthropology was that ethnographies are (in general) readable and don't make the heads of undergraduates explode.

Also: good luck with the not setting yourself on fire thing :P

[alias_sqbr]

See, maths has no essays at all(*) until you get to honours when they're like "Hey! Read a bunch of mathematics papers and then write a thesis, even though as a hard science graduate you're almost guaranteed to suck at both!" It's fun.

(*)Unless you get sick of a bad lecturer and decided to teach yourself the subject via the library...

[nico-wolfwood.livejournal.com]

hah! I'd tell that to EE but I don't think it would put him off that his job currently consists of writing papers...

[alias_sqbr]

I really need to get around to writing my "For the love of god don't do a Phd" post. But if nothing else lj isn't letting me post at ALL today (other people seem to be able to do it!)

I keep thinking "I should post asking if anyone else is unable to post..."

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

I see it as an unfortunate trade-off. You can express a concept with great depth and complexity using high-level technical language but make it inaccessible to all but experts in the field, or you can express it shallowly and simplistically but make it accessible to everyone. The choice is determined by your target audience. You could also go for a balance and end up somewhere in the middle, but most people don't do this because "people a bit more educated than the average but without an academic interest in the field" is an overly specific audience. That, and academia is still continuing the trend towards deep but narrow rather than broad but shallow. Who knows, perhaps UWA's proposed enforced education-broadening program will result in more of the material you're looking for.

In most cases, all you really need is a clearer definition of terms. "Sporadic simple group recognition algorithm" is a good example: the phrase is impenetrable jargon to anyone who doesn't know the technical definition you are using for at least 'sporadic', 'simple' and 'group'. Once the technical language has been explained in layman's terms, all the concepts presented should be understandable by a layman (with some degree of effort). Most academic papers don't do this because both the author and the audience share a definitional usage of terms, and the effort required to explain the terms for the few non-academics who read the paper outweighs the benefit.

Bein' Halpful

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

You can make anything you say impenetrable technical jargon wank.

I'm just saying.

(love you!)

Re: Bein' Halpful

[alias_sqbr]

Heh, see when I got the email notification for this I thought it was to my post rather than this comment, and was like "o.O Greteldragon loves me? Maybe I need to have a nap and look at the comment again later and it will make sense" And lo, it does! :)

Re: Bein' Halpful

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do have to admit my love for kadeton is not quite the same as the love I have for all my friends (which of course you are one of). Also I'm not as likely to call what you write wank, whereas I think he's used to me calling everything wank.

Is it just me or finding ways of saying how you love your friends without sounding like either a slut or a lesbian is getting increasingly hard. Stupid words. :)

Re: Bein' Halpful

[alias_sqbr]

Is it just me or finding ways of saying how you love your friends without sounding like either a slut or a lesbian is getting increasingly hard. Stupid words. :)

You should just buy us all lots of awesome presents then. Especially me.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes to pretty much all of that (in fact I quoted you in an edit to the post :D), though I think a lot of the time academic papers are more opaque than they need to be: as well as often just being naturally bad at writing, I think a lot of academics want to show off how smart they are rather than actually make sure people truly understand their ideas (that makes it all look too easy and encourages the competition!)

Also I think some concepts are just hard for some people, even once you get past the jargon. I explained my thesis topic to my mum like once every few months for several years and she never really got it beyond "It involves computers and big squares of numbers". (She's a smart woman, but abstract mathematics is not her bag) But explaining the jargon is certainly a pretty vital first step!

*adds link explaining what sporadic simple group recognition is, in case people want to know :) *

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

I'd like to challenge the assumption that it's important for people to know what's going on in academic discussions of things like race, class and gender. It really isn't. A very significant proportion of the academic discussions in these fields only exists to justify further academic discussion: they bear with them no valid or verifiable consequences.

Take feminist theory and the "male gaze." The "male gaze" is a dubious social extension of a dubious literary theory that came out of a dubious use of a dubious set of psychological theories. Consequently, you should only rally treat it seiously if you're wanting to use it in the academic arena; it would be very hard to draw genuine, workable real-world conclusions from it. But it is very useful for producing papers that you require to justify being a paid academic.

You'll see similar things in other (similar) fields in the social sciences. Like Hayek's criticism of socialism as a theory that has never originated from the working classes. Or the criticsm the logical positivists had of Heidegger. Or any theory that would like to talk about sexuality by way of a Lacanian "mirror stage."

It's also the case that the academic discussions are deliberately (and probably unnecessarily) obscure. In the introduction to one of her books Judith Butler (as an example) basically says that the only way her work can be written is by making it incomprehensible by ordinary language standards.

In fact, I think a great contemporary Australian example of this kind of thing is Germain Greer's "On Rage." Where she badly mangles the concept of black rage, combines it with a liberal dose of incredibly questionable gender analyses, and comes to the effective conclusion that Australian aboriginals are doomed because they're men are violent and their women are whores. It makes for a...I won't say good, but interesting theoretical argument, but that's really quite unimportant if it's social justice you're after.

My goodness. Typos

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

Well.
*exist
*really
*seriously
*their

I am SHOCKED by you're bad splling.Shockd!

[alias_sqbr]

I'm not saying it's important for people to understand all the high-faluting abstract stuff academics talk about, but there are somewhat complicated but still important and practical ideas which should be explained to as wide an audience as possible.

It's like, I don't need to know the equation for the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index(*) but probably should (and would like to) have some idea what it means for inflation to go up. (nb, I do not in fact have a very good grasp on what this means. But I probably should!)

I don't need to understand much about the way the way short chain fatty acids are used by the intestinal mucosa(*) to know I need to eat fibre for my guts to work properly.

Similarly, people may not need to understand the ins and outs of the abstract theory of "The male gaze" or what have you, but there's something to be said for explaining how men can look at things from a female POV in order to prevent sexual assault. And there's a LOT of feminist blogs/books etc aimed at regular people (and not so regular people, in a continuum) which go through this sort of stuff, and they have an audience and I think serve an important social justice function.

Similarly, there are fairly abstract ideas like critical whiteness theory and subject positions which regular people may not be able to get their heads around very easily, but (hopefully) we can agree that fighting racism is something everyone should be working towards, and that requires as many people as possible to be able to understand stuff like the fact that racism is a sickness of society, not individual bad people, otherwise every time someone is criticised for doing something racist they'll just go "BUT I'M A GOOD PERSON I CAN'T BE RACIST"

And yes, a lot of academic jargon is deliberately unreadable, because academics are people and people suck :/ I can't speak for whether or not academic theories tend to serve any practical purpose since I come from Pure Mathematics, where the whole point is to make something elegant and self consistent, any practical applications are left to mere mortals like engineers.

(*)nb all this jargon was found via google, I do not in fact know what it means :D

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my philosophy too: there's no reason for complex theory to be unreadable.

The vast majority of all academic texts I've ever read are badly written, rather than cleverly written but at a level difficult to understand (which is what they are aiming for I think). I say this as an expert in writing.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, I think sometimes you do have to assume that people know the jargon and basic ideas or you'll be all day defining things. But yes, the main problem I've had with most unreadable academic texts (especially areas like maths where I do know the jargon) is that they're just badly written. It's like people don't even try :/

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

Oh wait- there is a distinction here!

Moreton-Robinson IS dense...but half that's because she's packing so much content in the 1 book and because, frankly, she's challenging the norms of racism within liberal academic language even.

I wouldn't compare that to Butler at all- Butler's uncessarily obtuse and tries to justify using that language for it's own sake - thus annoying many and in a way co-opting queer cultures FOR academia, rather than using academic voice to gain ground for the culture-of-origin politics as Moreton-Robinson does.

Generally, I think academic and populist voice function best as complementary.

Anyone using terms like "hegemonic discourse" has stuff all chance of a popular audience, true. Yet, there seems to be vogue in progressive publishing atm where defenses of populism are misused to exuse work which goes far beyond populism into "dumbed down apologia for conservatism"

Hence the complementary...because it takes at least a few people in populist publishing who DO know all the heavy theory to spot when it's populism and when it's co-option.

*reflects a moment on what was done in the Earthsea film adaptation....had they read much anti-racism theory?*

Although yes, I do think populism is the cat's pyjama's and vital to politics. Smart populist politics is often the realm of arts and smart journalism or blogs though. Which also reflects the demise of the non-fiction book in publishing but I digress. Attempts to merge the populist voice of those mediums with books by academics have tended to result in really spin, elitist lightweight books [Ariel Levy] as much as accessible academic theory [Ghassan Hage]

Also, have you read many of Alice Walkers early short stories? Walker calls the white central POV of womanhood into question in them a lot too, although obviously in a much less jargon thinky way.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh yes, there is a difference between dense-but-good and just badly written. The problem is that as an outsider it's not always easy to tell the difference :)

Yes, academic and populist do need to go hand-in-hand, no point explaining things clearly if what you're explaining is wrong. I used to work as a science communicator and got into disputes with my more fun-vs-science minded coworkers (especially the ones who didn't have a strong background in science and mainly saw themselves as entertainers)