Eat the tentative!

Why do people bother to write articles that are tentative suggestions based on insignificant differences? Why do they write pages upon pages of allegedly critical interrogation when they are conceding all the major points, when they admit that the object of their criticism fully knows whatever point they are making but 'perhaps doesn't emphasize it enough'? My god, this is idiocy on stilts. Such 'arguments' aren't worth the time it takes to read them much less write them.

Yes, people have to publish or perish. Yes, much critical-theoretical academic work requires interpretation, working through, the tracing of small differences. But that doesn't mean that others should be subjected to all this. A quick summary will do just fine, thank you. Better--save it for a footnote in a project where you are really doing something.

And another thing: I really hate academic articles that tell us what we should be doing and criticize us for ignoring something or other. The back story for those pieces: "I just discovered some really cool literature (critical geography, neuroscience, set theory) that I didn't even know existed!" And so the enthusiastic author now criticizes her past self for not having known this neat stuff, but she calls this past self 'us' or 'political theory.'

Last--all this applies to me.

Comments

[Rob]

I tend to think that the situation you outline in the first paragraph is often just a 'politeness strategy'. Although storming polemics can be fun, it's sometimes useful (from the perspective of professional or perhaps personal relationships) to soften critique slightly - even if the differences are quite important.

[Jodi]

Rob--fair point. Then again, maybe the problem is in the adverbs, that is, a solid argument should speak for itself without needing a bunch of qualifiers, extreme or tentative.

[Sharif]

Eve Sedgwick writes a little about this in Tendencies. She decries a kind of nit-picky paranoia in popular strands of critical theory and cultural studies that leads to, on the one hand, blasting denunciations, and, on the other, redemptive Utopian "calls" for some thing or another at the end of these essays. Papers that make "tentative" suggestions or describe themselves as "tentatives" often fit the profile she describes of over-blown rhetoric applied to insignificant differences, as well as an over-estimation of the cultural importance of scholarship.

[Jodi]

sharif--it's interesting that 'nit picky' is associated with/read in terms of paranoia.

[Sharif]

I need to look at the argument again, but I imagine it has to do with the way in which critical work participates in a certain group dynamic. Nit-picky denunciations reveal an Oedipal investment in established/establishment arguments within the "group." A kind of paranoia is natural in the rhetorical misattribution of life & death powers to other people's arguments. Sedgwick is responding to a certain (Deleuzian) minority writing style that envisions a dramatic scenario where academic work is speaking out from silence. Queer Theory is her topic in the essay, but I think the dynamic she describes is generally applicable to plenty of other fields where trumping another is considered the legitimate basis of a paper.