Say that again – in English??

[erastes]

This is exactly why I don’t enjoy text books:

Gay and lesbian historical fictions often foreground these three topoi, their parallels with ostensibly atavistic ways of knowing enacted, for example, in Christian narratives, reveal continuities between past and present, countering the tendency in scholarship towards discontinuous periodization of the history of sex. 

and

The novel’s (The Color Purple) syncretistic use of conjure in this way also symbolizes artistic expression. 

and

Spanbauer invokes the berdache tradition especially as part of a larger pattern in the novel of undermining the authority of any one definitive categorization scheme for sexual behaviour.  Thus Shed’s name itself derives from what Eve Sedgwick might call a “nonce taxonomy” of sexual behaviour.

Save me.

From  “Gay & Lesbian Historical Fiction” by Norman W Jones.

I’m Cletus, aren’t I? The slack-jawed yokel.

Comments

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the author(s) of this book should have taken some sort of course in how to write clearly. That is some of the most overly complicated text I've had the misfortune to read.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it! I don't understand one sentence in two and I don't understand his though processes AT ALL. It's making my head hurt - and I feel STOOPID.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Have you ever had to read Foucault? Or Derrida? Painful. Very painful.

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

You're not Cletus. Many academics think that limiting the accessibility of their writing to people willing to hack through needlessly obscure prose makes them, and what they have to say, more important.

[joannesopercook.livejournal.com]

I think you and I went to the same graduate school. :D

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Sad, but all too true.

[joannesopercook.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know this game. It's a favourite of academics everywhere. It's called "Let's Speak Our Own Secret Language and They'll Think We're Clever."

Literary criticism and critical theory are two areas that are soooooooooo fond of jargon, it's not even funny. It's how academics justify talking about Teh Ghey - they reason that, if you bury it in enough jargon, nobody can see your hard-on. :-D

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

"Literary criticism and critical theory are two areas that are soooooooooo fond of jargon, it's not even funny. It's how academics justify talking about Teh Ghey - they reason that, if you bury it in enough jargon, nobody can see your hard-on."

LOL. This is priceless, and all too true!

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

>if you bury it in enough jargon, nobody can see your hard-on. :-D

AHAHAHAHAHAHA! It's funny 'cause it's true!

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I think one is saying "They don't get the historical details right, but that's a deliberate challenge to the period."

2) Voodoo is artistic? That's all I get out of that. And somehow, I thought the use of conjure was because that is what women in that time would have done. Ooo, now it's artistic! And syncra-whatever.

3) They use berdaches and names to say "hey let's play with gender?"

Am I even in the ballpark?

My opinion is there is one -ize word that is appropriate to the quotes in this post. Fertilizer.

[gweneiriol.livejournal.com]

say what?

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

I had to read a book at uni on Gore Vidal and the gay lit of the 50's and so I'm sat there with this rare book in the private study section of the library
going snerk
snerk
genuine laugh out loud

how can you take seriously literary criticism based upon the concept of "rectal revelation" and "salvation through sodomy" and someone had written, in pencil in the margin - now there's a religion for the 21st century

learn to read between the lines and stop reading those kind of boring text books they're not for writers they're for the self congratulatory masturbation of scholars making themselves seem smarter than their peers,

the really good stuff is often found in volumes of letters or biographies as they are actually intended to present information rather than the mutual appreciation society of literary criticism.

I wouldn't worry too much about literary critics because being one I know they use big fancy terms that mean nothing, for example when describing Camilla I got to use the sentence "The antagonist uses her sexuality, specifically her vulva as a form of vaginal dentata for the sole purpose of emasculation which results in the seduction of his wife."

I loved that sentence, i was proud of it for like a whole week, I considered having it tattooed on my person,

you make up terms and then to make yourself feel cleverer you reference other people using terms you didn't understand either, with bonus points if they are in a foreign language, extra for German.

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

>to make yourself feel cleverer you reference other people using terms you didn't understand either, with bonus points if they are in a foreign language, extra for German.

In a freakin' nutshell.

Ten points to Ravensclaw for use of "dentata" in a sentence!

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Question for the author: Thesaurus much?

What a pretentious, badly written load of crap.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

T's hugely annoying!

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Holy shit. Yeah, that's why I couldn't face graduate school. There's just an enormous bullshit factor.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I've read heavy law text books that were more understandable than this. I'm never going to get past the first couple of pages, which is a bloody shame as it's the only work on the subject.

[shoeless-girl.livejournal.com]

Ick, that's very poorly written in my opinion. I was taught that if an intelligent lay-person cannot understand what has been written you're doing it WRONG.

(My job is re-writing this sort of crap into "plain English" - had to resist urge to rewrite the sample paragraphs).

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Tempted to send you the book for translation!

[beckyblack]

Wow. Though there were only two words I had to look up, I still don't understand what the hell it's talking about.

I also suspect that the usage of "nonce" in this context is not the one I'm familiar with from British cop shows.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

"You slag, you nonce!" Damn! My Gene Hunt icons are no longer on my list. Just when they'd be perfect too.

[angrboda]

O.o

Where's my dictionary...?

I'm not used to that many words I don't understand. Or rather, I'm not used to that many words I don't understand and can't guess the approximate meaning of from the context.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's EXACTLY how I feel. It talks down its nose to me, inasmuch as "if you don't understand this, you are a stupid person" and that's something I hate.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Is 'topoi' the plural of 'topic'?

[welshbard.livejournal.com]

Its the plural of topos or place. It's all Greek to me.

[welshbard.livejournal.com]

Wow! Even for opaque academic writing that is bad. Phenomenally bad. A total and complete lack of information and communication. Even if you simply diagram those sentences, you'll find that they don't use proper grammar, but the prose is so turgid you can't tell.

Wow! Just Wow!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Isn't it dire? My eyes are bleeding. I won't be reading any more of it. I don't even like to admit how much I spent on this book.

[ammonite7.livejournal.com]

I began chuckling while reading the (sentences?) and continued chuckling through the comments. Otherwise, I am speechless.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Ain't it speshul?

Speaking Textbooklish instead of English

[ruth-sims.livejournal.com]

Makes you wonder how many words it takes for these people say, "I have to go to the loo."

Such high-flown language for two books that are so down-to-earth!

Re: Speaking Textbooklish instead of English

[erastes.livejournal.com]

If i hadn't read the books he references before reading this textbook, he certainly wouldn't make me want to read them.

[zehavit-lamasu.livejournal.com]

The Hebrew slang for this is FALTZANUT... loosely translates as "the art of speaking out of one's arse"... I am allergic to it ^^;;.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That sums it up very nicely, I think. I'm tempted to review it with one word. That one.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Academic wank. Twits of this stripe ought to just tattoo "I AM ERUDITER THAN YOU" on their foreheads so they can forego the textual weenie-waving.

A good writer/teacher/lecturer takes pride in making knowledge accessible, not in obscuring the data in a shitload of jargon. I worked in academia for about a dozen years, and it's always the pinheads who have to resort to jargon.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not one of his students!

[wildestranger.livejournal.com]

I do that shit for a living and I have to say, that is pointlessly (and moreover, uselessly) confusing. Clearly they didn't have to pass anyone's standards of clarity and intelligibility to get this published - that is not good academic writing.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's just unintelligible - for me anyway. *gives up*

[gaedhal.livejournal.com]

See, it is an "insider" language of the so-called "academic
discourse community." It's not meant to be read by "regular"
people -- it's meant to prove you can speak the code. It's
like an initiation ritual to learn it and use it. I won't
riff on the stupidity of that idea, only state that it
exists and if you want to get a degree or a job at certain
places, you better speak it!

I used to write papers in perfectly acceptable English -- and
then have my advisor tell me to re-write them. So I did. But if
I ever submitted one for publication, I always changed it back --
and they were always fine to publish it in regular old English.
No problem. They actually wanted readers, I think!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's barmy - even the legal profession are advised to make their documents understandable these days (and good job too, say I.)

This is such a shame as I really wanted to read this book for obvious reasons. Perhaps I'll have to write my own one day, and it won't be a scholarly work, though!