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trent
Member
Posts: 170
Trent
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 9, 2006, 23:55

Ummm… after reading my own post it sounds as though I believe that in Science, writing is crystal clear, while in the arts writing is intentionally verbiose and ambiguous.  I wish that were true, because then at least scientific writing would be easy to understand.  Sadly, scientific journals have many examples of writing that is barely understandable even by fellow researchers.

I think ‘Hari’ is partially correct - I think that some people are nervous that they WILL be understood, and they their ideas aren’t ’sciencey’ enough, or too theoretically weak.  So they cloak their ideas in long words with ambiguous meanings, hoping that everyone will be a bit mystified.

It must be an effective strategy, because it’s all too evident in both the arts and the sciences.  

T.

josh phelps
Member
Posts: 33
josh phelps
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 09:53

you guys need to pile all this honky tonk writing on several pallets…then…you know…

My e-mail address is invalid and if I don’t change it to a valid address soon my username will be deleted again. -Gripped

harihari
Member
Posts: 305
chris
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 10:40

Ok.  You probably won’t believe this, but it’s true:

Fredric Jameson, a Marxist (theortical standpoint) and one of the Big Cheeses on contemporary literary (and architectural)theory actually claims that clear communication is a problem in critical writing, since it opens the ideas up to reading/understanding by non-elite people. And by doing so the non-revolutionary and non-critical thining types have access to these ideas, and they can they appropriate, bastardise, what have you, the ideas.

I am honestly not making this up.  The guy is tenured at Princeton or soem sh*t makes 0,000 a year to produce ideas like this.  Reality has nothing on this guy.

chris stolz

Watch an 18-pitch free route go up at
http://gumbiesoncrack.blogspot.com

sark astiq
Member
Posts: 252
sark astiq
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 11:03

Is it true that Joe Rockheads is actually BUILT of pallets?

dr. send
Member
Posts: 185
willko
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 14:37

Speaking of cool new multisyllabic words that get appropriated and bastardized by non-elite people, I was watching Iron Chef America a long time ago and one of the chefs presented something like a deconstructed sandwich, and according to a couple of dictionaries deconstruct was back-formed from deconstruction, which a lot of people seem to think is either dissection or deconstructionism (which I guess is equivalent to post-modernism for all their intents and purposes). So, realistically, I’m not so sure that Jameson has anything to worry about.

(And Hari, were you denied tenure somewhere? You seem bitter.)

dr. send
Member
Posts: 185
willko
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 17:44

Trent, I agree that bad writing abounds in both the arts and the sciences, and I’m glad you noticed the bias in your first post.

Indeed, bad writing abounds everywhere, and it’s no wonder that bad writers seize every opportunity to use superfluous and ambiguous phrasing, especially as they learn lots of cool new multisyllabic words as undergrads and grad students, because as you and Hari said, it lessens the risk of their poorly constructed arguments being hastily debunked.

I think that the art-crit crowd that Hari referred to might be largely constituted by people who want to wear the black turtleneck, so they end up stumbling through the theory so that they can feel like they belong. I also think that interpreting Tarantino films and MSN conversations is pointless and a waste of time, and I’m disappointed to see such showboating lumped together with theory that has lots of social and political relevance.

colind
Member
Posts: 20
colind
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 19:28

Josh does make a strong point for justifiable pallet burning.

fatknuckle
Member
Posts: 9
Phat
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 22:22

You see, this is why I love the Gripped forum.
Whenever I want to know what’s going down in Canadian Climbing I just tune in to stimulating and thought provoking topics such as this one.
Might I add that I have never, ever seen Sonnie, Nels, Lev or Bob Bergman for that matter burn a pallet.  And I beleive there’s a good reason for that.
God I love climbing.

harihari
Member
Posts: 305
chris
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 10, 2006, 23:34

trent– no, never did a PhD etc, but I did do grad school (MA).  interesting fun experience, learned a ton, but oh my Lord, the jargon– insane.  it should indeed be loaded onto a j-tree post-send pallet and fired.  its funny; when culture-crit academics get together, they gossip.  they don’t talk about their work, which mostly involves really complex words for simple ideas. e.g.  JARGON: the inherent dialectic of romance promises the dissolution of hierarchical binary terms into the reconstructed whole of a hybridized, multi-faceted play of difference REAL ENGLISH: in chick flicks, you’re psyched that they get over their boy-girl arguments and have fun hooking up.

chris stolz

Watch an 18-pitch free route go up at
http://gumbiesoncrack.blogspot.com

bumpkin
Member
Posts: 30
bumpkin
Post Re: Pallet burning
on: December 11, 2006, 17:15

I don’t know, the Quaternary geology passage wasn’t the best piece of writing, but it was pretty clear. There’s a difference between technical writing and jargon. Lacustrine has a narrow, well-defined and well-understood meaning. A sentence of Heidegger can mean six different things to three different people.

Trent — the university in Squamish has a job opening for an ecologist. Too much of a stretch? http://questu.ca/administration/human_resources/employment_opportunities.php?id=17

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