Why Graduate Students Should Write like Shite, Part I

Somewhere in the doctoral process graduate students learn to write like scholars.  They realize that in order to get published or to receive the accolades of their discipline they must write a certain way.  It’s as if there exists a secret scroll on which is penned the sacred law of academic writing: Write to convey only content and do not fall prey to the seduction of form.  If readers are bored, that is their fault.  If readers think they understand you they are mistaken and only have a pedestrian comprehension at best.  To be a scholar, we are taught, is to write opaquely.  Fortunately, the saving grace of scholarship is this: it is only read by other scholars, anyway.

In his book Figures of Dissent (Eagleton, 2003), Terry Eagleton criticizes two theorists on this point.  Post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak, Eagleton claims, ignores her readers in the name of her own intellect: “Post-colonial theorists are often to be found agonizing about the gap between their own intellectual discourse and the natives of whom they speak; but the gap might look rather less awesome if they did not speak a discourse which most intellectuals, too, find unintelligible” (159).  Who, after all, would write a sentence that reads, “many of us are trying to carve out positive negotiations with the epistemic graphing of imperialism” (ibid)?  Spivak’s most fanatic reader is likely Spivak herself.  Eagleton’s criticism also extends to Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom.  “It would be charitable”, writes Eagleton, “to think that Bloom writes as slackly and cackhandedly as he does because he is out to attract the general reader. He is admirably intent of rescuing literature from the arcane rituals of US academia and restoring it to a wider audience.  Even so, you cannot help suspecting that this rambling, platitudinous stuff is the best he can now muster” (169).   In both cases, the scholars’ pens drip pretentiousness.  It’s no wonder graduate students end up writing like windbags, Eagleton might say.  Windbags are all they know.

Eagleton is not alone.  In a review of a now popular work in critical geography (Soja, 1996), Andy Merrifield criticizes the book’s ideas and the stylelessness of the author, Edward Soja.  After trashing several core ideas from the book, Merrifield adds that “maybe the real problem here is Soja’s prose.  It is far too remote and wordy, and often screams out for clear-spoken directness.  His verbosity militates against him really getting down deep, really immersing himself in the convulsions of daily life and in the cracks and marginal twilight zone of urban life. This is where his Thirdspace [theory] resides and it is plainly where he wants to be, but he cannot quite stoop that low” (347).  Ideas are only part of scholarship; the way in which ideas are presented is equally vital.  What do we call that “way in which ideas are presented”?  Some might call it form, others style or representation.  Since content and form are a well-known twosome, we’ll keep them together.

To be continued next week…

Related posts:

1. Why Graduate Students Should Write Like Shite, Part 3 Sociologist Laurel Richardson thinks that writing itself is a form...
2. Why Graduate Students Should Write Like Shite, Part 2 It’s not only a handful of scholars who treasure content...
3. The Importance of Articles in Teaching Writing I can’t stop thinking about content and form.  Hardly the...
4. Why Teachers Should Let Students Write Textbooks I came across this piece recently about the rise of...
5. From the Journals: Why we should write about our teaching If only we wrote and shared more about our classroom...