ATAR Notes: Forum
Uni Stuff => Faculties => Arts => Topic started by: Eriny on August 15, 2008, 03:24:10 pm
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At the moment I'm doing a research project-thingy on Judith Butler and her writing is so annoyingly incomprehensible. Here is a sentence she wrote which won her an award for bad writing:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
What the fuck???
If there's a downside to Arts, it's trying to read this stuff.
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I see a mere 6 words I don't know the meaning of at all, and quite a few more where I can recognise a word but have no idea what it means (eg totalities obviously comes from total, but I do not understand its meaning in this context)
Also, 80 word long sentence? I am too lazy to find word count but I'd guess about there
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94 words :P
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Dude. I got lost when I read the first 10 words of that long sentence (I suck at English and anything to do with it...I have very limited vocabulary...even reading my sister's essays is a nightmare with all her complex language (and she's only in year 11..))
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.... what
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I could read it, but don't know the meanings/context of enough of the terms to make sense of it.
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I'm clueless with half of those words.
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what the...?
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Lmao it has 'Look at how smart I am' written all over it.
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Lmao it has 'Look at how smart I am' written all over it.
How can you say that without knowing the context?
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Lol. Instant Headache, read two sentences in total daily.
WARNING: DO NOT OVERREAD. 3 SENTENCES WILL CAUSE INTENSE HEADACHES, 3+ WILL INDUCE A COMA.
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(http://www.c2i.ntu.edu.sg/AI+CI/Humor/AI_Jokes/img/Academia-BillWatterson.gif)
If there's a downside to Arts, it's trying to read this stuff.
The more interesting question is: why? why do academics do this?
Robert Frank, an economics professor from Princeton provided an explanation for why this tends to happen in the humanities:
http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=robert+frank&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#
(jump to 38:00)
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I can't really watch the video (I'm getting close to my usage limit), but I have asked why. I asked why to my supervisor. She said that Judith Butler needed a good editor and also, at the time of writing she was still working out a lot of her ideas for herself which always makes things less clear. Also, Butler writes about how the current linguistic structures we have in place kind of compromises descriptions of the human experience and so she's fighting against that. So, there are some good reasons for this kind of bullshit, although, as an undergrad, I can't imagine that I'd get a good mark for an essay that had a 94 word sentence (as well as several other sentences of similar length).
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Hehe, It's almost as if every second word was just thesaurasised (now I'm doing it :P)
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I've a friend, [doing 3rdyr BA majoring in Sociology] who, [even when inebriated] can explain everything about every key concept in cultural studies -structuralism, post structuralism, existentialism, postmodernism etc.
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Arts people - do you find that most of the stuff you have to read (for Arts specifically) is more accessible? Because I was planning on studying Arts, but the thought of having to wade through writing like that (or worse, Derrida, Foucault et al) on a weekly basis makes me nervous!
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Only the French could invent poststructuralism ::)
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Only the French could invent poststructuralism
Lawl, well it's not only French poststructuralists who are at fault when it comes to writing WTF-inducing sentences - Lacan for instance I find unreadable too. But yeah, at the risk of exposing my latent Francophobia, I've gotta agree!
Seriously though, I would like it if someone could reassure me about Arts subjects/set reading actually making sense?
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Depends on what subjects you choose?
There's barely any reading in language subjects .... :P though philosophy readings are hell.
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Yeah, subjects with those sort of readings are most likely to be concentrated within Literature [ask Eriny or Mark_Alec or someone who has done it how frequently they occur.] I mean, readings from many other subjects might be challenging, but not seemingly existing for the sole purpose of obfuscation. :)
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There's barely any reading in language subjects ....
Oh cool, that's awesome. Crisis averted haha
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Derrida is a bitch, but Foucault isn't too bad, especially his later stuff. My favourite kind of philosopher guy is Hadot because he writes so clearly (or rather, the translation is really clear). Usually if I encounter something that is incomprehensible I read wiki or similar and then try again. It's probably bad scholarship, but it helps a lot to know the general gist before reading it.
Some philosophy readings are okay. I find analytic philosophy readings usually easy, though boring as hell. Readings in anthropology and pols are usually pretty easy too, and literature is mixed.
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I want to do sociology nao. I think I really been far as decided to even go want to do act more like the person who's quoted in the OP.