Just Being Difficult?: Academic Writing in the Public ArenaIs academic writing, particularly in the disciplines of literary theory and cultural studies, needlessly obscure? The claim has been widely circulated in the media and subject to passionate debate, but it has not been the subject of serious discussion. Just Being Difficult? provides learned and thoughtful analyses of the claim, of those it targets, and of the entire question of how critical writing relates to its intended publics and to audiences beyond them. In this book, a range of distinguished scholars, including some who have been charged with willful obscurity, argue for the interest and importance of some of the procedures that critics have preferred to charge with obscurity rather than confront in another way. The debate on difficult writing hovers on the edges of all academic writing that seeks to play a role in the public arena. This collection is a much-needed contribution to the discussion. |
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Contents
Dressing Up Dressing Down | 1 |
A Historical | 15 |
Humes Learned and Conversable Worlds | 29 |
Bad Writing and Good Philosophy | 43 |
The Metaphysics of Clarity and the Freedom of Meaning | 58 |
Feminisms Broken English | 75 |
The Resistance of Theory or The Worth of Agony | 95 |
Styles of Intellectual Publics | 106 |
On Difficulty the AvantGarde and Critical Moribundity | 129 |
Difficulty in Modern Poetry and Aesthetics | 139 |
Bad Writing | 157 |
The Morality of Form or Whats Bad about Bad Writing? | 171 |
An Interview with | 181 |
Values of Difficulty | 199 |
Contributors | 217 |
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Common terms and phrases
academic Adorno aesthetic argue argument audience bad writing become Benjamin Butler Cavell claim clarity clear comes common concept consider context continues course critical cultural debates defined difficult disciplines discourse discussion effect English essay example experience expression fact feminism feminist field function give given humanities Hume Hume's idea imagine important intellectual interest issue kind knowledge language learned linguistic literary literature Marxism mass matter means mind moral move nature Norma Rae notion object obscure original perhaps philosophy poetry political position possible practice precisely present problem produce question reader reason relation resistance rhetoric School seek seems sense sentence social speak specialized structure studies style suggests teach theoretical theory thing thought tion translation truth turn understand University Press York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Just Being Difficult?: Academic Writing in the Public Arena Cultural memory in the present |
| Authors | Jonathan D. Culler, Kevin Lamb |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Stanford University Press, 2003 |
| ISBN | 0804747105, 9780804747103 |
| Length | 223 pages |
| Subjects | › Education / General Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |