(no subject)

[danuv]

Yesterday I began reading one of my feminist art history books. It isn't a large book but it is written in Scholarese. Every sentence is taking me eons to pick apart and understand, when I can. It isn't that the concepts themselves are so difficult, it's that the way she choses to phrase them seems intended to obfuscate their meaning. Personally I think this is a weapon that the ultra-educated use to weed out those of us who lack what they consider to be the proper level of indoctrination. Oh well, I want to learn what they have to teach and so I guess I will have to play their game.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

It's frustrating though. I tried to read that awesome book on English Rhetoric in India but it was so full of Academic BullShit that it wasn't even a matter of not being able to untangle sentences - even when I untangled them I was left going "Huh? Oh no you didn't!"

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Which is surprising in a book about rhetoric? :P

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Not really, and even less surprising in a book full of joyous postcolonial jargon :P I'm glad at least once you get yours untangled it's not crazy concepts too. I think reading academic writing is like riding a bike -annoying and requires a helmet and kneepads. Or - once you get the hang of it you can always somehow pick it up again. But it's a definite skill.