Fretful--I know! Given the other marginalia, which show some solid familiarity with medieval hagiography, it's a surprising lapse.
GEW--Indeed. The other night I was reading a recent Very High Theory essay and I finally wrote in the margins, "This is gibberish." I stopped reading about a paragraph later.
heu mihi - An adverb can make a real difference, eh?
As for your comment to GEW, when you wrote "This is gibberish..." I could be wrong, but at least in my field, it feels like there is a move back toward clarity in writing. The "next-gen plen" speeches at SAA last year were very much invested in close reading, and therefore were light on the "theory-speak" and heavy on the clarity of analysis. I confess that I am delighted with this change.
Fie--Medieval lit crit is usually delightfully lucid. But this was a theoretical essay on affect theory, which in some cases (I'm coming to see) draws heavily on gobbledygook. In my view. I mean, if you're going to talk about "metastabilities" and "quantum indeterminacy of the implicate order," you need to do some heavy term-defining. And buy me a drink.
6 comments:
Reminds me of my margin notes in Jane Eyre when Brocklehurst makes Jane stand on a chair with the sign "Liar" around her neck.
Sometimes it's difficult to maintain critical distance.
That's funny! But I think the annotator may be unaware that "condescending" is a positive attribute in this context...
Fretful--I know! Given the other marginalia, which show some solid familiarity with medieval hagiography, it's a surprising lapse.
GEW--Indeed. The other night I was reading a recent Very High Theory essay and I finally wrote in the margins, "This is gibberish." I stopped reading about a paragraph later.
heu mihi - An adverb can make a real difference, eh?
As for your comment to GEW, when you wrote "This is gibberish..." I could be wrong, but at least in my field, it feels like there is a move back toward clarity in writing. The "next-gen plen" speeches at SAA last year were very much invested in close reading, and therefore were light on the "theory-speak" and heavy on the clarity of analysis. I confess that I am delighted with this change.
Fie--Medieval lit crit is usually delightfully lucid. But this was a theoretical essay on affect theory, which in some cases (I'm coming to see) draws heavily on gobbledygook. In my view. I mean, if you're going to talk about "metastabilities" and "quantum indeterminacy of the implicate order," you need to do some heavy term-defining. And buy me a drink.
I recently had a similar "affect theory" reading experience. I feel affirmed.
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