Is sense/nonsense an untenable dichotomy produced by oppressive binary logic?
Thanks to Jenn for the link to this refreshing article about academics' misuse of language to make simple--simplistic even--ideas seem complicated. Or complexified, if you will. This is something that Rob Taylor complained about--justifiably--in his review of John Newlove's new Selected, specifically in the afterword by Jeff Derksen. I just finished reviewing the book too, and can't for the life of me understand why the publisher would think that piece of jargon-larded bafflegab was an appropriate closing note to the selected works of a poet who disliked theory and was dedicated to an ethos of clarity in his own writing. It seems almost disrespectful.
Here's a poser: If Whitman was alive and writing today, would he say that he contains "pluralities" or "multiplicities"?
Here's a poser: If Whitman was alive and writing today, would he say that he contains "pluralities" or "multiplicities"?
2 comments:
Only in the context of young men, and then I think he'd quite like the words.
If Whitman were alive today,and infected with relativism, he'd say he contains "ambiguous referents signifying optional and inexhaustible inconclusiveness".
One searches in vain for a concrete noun.
My take on the professorial twaddle is that it's a make-work self-important project to sell their "authority" to the naive. I suppose they're tired of embroidering the classics with yet another superfluous essay, and are trying to "heighten" the academic discourse. Just another thread in the post-post-modernist theoretical stupor.
Good blog, Zach.
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