Lessons for academics from history

Here's Daniel Defoe, on why academics should be excluded from his proposed Society for reforming the English language:

The Work of this Society shou'd be to encourage Polite Learning, to polish and refine the English Tongue, and advance the so much neglected Faculty of Correct Language…

Into this Society should be admitted none but Persons Eminent for Learning, and yet none, or very few, shoe Business or Trade was Learning: For I may be allow'd, I suppose, to say, We have seen many great Scholars, meer Learnèd Men, and Graduates in the last Degree of Study, whose English has been far from Polite, full of Stiffness and Affectation, hard Words, and long unusual Coupling of Syllables and Sentences, which sound harsh and untuneable to the Ear, and shock the Reader, both in Expression and Understanding'. 

Now I'm with those who say that languages are sprawling beasts which can't and shouldn't be tamed, but I can't help agreeing with Defoe here: some academic writers are needlessly convoluted as a performance of academia - it's particularly painful when students feel they have to mimic this to show that they're 'proper' members of the community.

One of the guiltiest parties is, alas, one of my inspirations, Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble. In the introduction to the tenth anniversary to the work, she takes up the critique of her particularly dense style:

…neither grammar nor style are particularly neutral. Learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalised language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself… there is nothing radical about common sense. It would be a mistake to think that received grammar is the best vehicle for expressing radical views, given the constraints that grammar imposes upon thought, indeed upon the thinkable itself. But formulations that twist grammar… produce more work for their readers, and sometimes their readers are offended… does their complaint emerge from a consumer expectation of intellectual life? Is there, perhaps, a value to be derived from such experiences of linguistic difficulty? If gender itself is naturalised through grammatical norms, as Monique Wittig has argued, then the alteration of gender at the most fundamental epistemic level will be conducted, in part, through contesting the grammar in which gender is given.
The demand for lucidity forgets the ruses that motor the ostensibly "clear" view… Who devises the protocols of "clarity" and whose interests do they serve? What is foreclosed by the insistence on parochial standards of transparency… What does "transparency" keep obscure?

Hmm. For someone who believes that it is her mission to fundamentally alter grammar at an 'epistemic level' in pursuit of breaking down binary oppositions, Butler expresses herself rather well while remaining within the bounds of intelligibility in this introduction. Her point is that grammar is an exercise of power and exclusion, and that it should be ruptured - and yet there's a rather distasteful attack on the reader encoded here, one which labels all those within the inherited linguistic tradition as lazy consumerists who should be excluded if they can't be bothered to think carefully enough. Difficult ideas certainly require technical and subtle language - but I feel here that Butler's position is rather defensive. I don't think that intelligibility is so much of a constraint as Butler asserts - languages are flexible machines capable of intelligibly bearing a wider range of meaning than she appears to believe.

Obviously I'm not operating at the intellectual or public level Butler habitually works at, but I do think we have a responsibility to our readers and audiences - mostly undergraduate students - in my case. A new student isn't stupid, merely uninducted into the academic community as yet. As Butler points out, inducting someone into a community, linguistic or otherwise, is an exercise of power: they accept our paradigms to contribute, but at the same time, they have an opportunity to shape the paradigms to some extent. I don't, frankly, see how Butler expects to radically alter grammar and the social structures they reflect by making herself so formidably unintelligible. After all, she too grew up in these linguistic structures and - however unwillingly - bears the traces.

When I'm teaching, I raise the intellectual temperature gradually. I identify the points of interest/contention/complication and attempt to explain why they're important. At each step of the way, I try to get students to think their way around these points (this is the most important element of the educational process) and we gradually complicate the issues by raising further arguments. At no stage do I announce that any student who doesn't get it is a lazy, passive consumerist.

'When we are safe inside, nothing dangerous can happen to us'

While eating my lunch, we were booted out into the cold for a fire alarm - the second one this week. Shivering, I read a little more of Moominpappa at Sea. I was talking about it to Mark last night, pushing my argument that it's a children's book dealing with the psychological effect of the end of paternalism and traditional masculinity - it's Freudian and Butlerian. It struck me just now that even the title is beautifully double: Moominpappa is literally at sea - occupying a (phallic) lighthouse in the middle of the feminine, attractive but dangerous sea - to recuperate his masculine duty. Moominmamma seeks only fertile soil, halfway between the extremities of suicide (the sea) or dictatorship (the lighthouse). Psychologically, Moominpappa is 'at sea'.

If you aren't persuaded, try these quotes:

One afternoon, Moominpappa was walking about in his garden feeling at a loss. He had no idea what to do with himself, because it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being done by somebody else.

Moominpappa aimlessly pottered about in his garden, his tail dragging along the ground behind him in a melancholy way.

The family stopped what they were doing and said 'Yes. Of course. Yes, yes'. Then they took no more notice of him, and got on with what they were doing.

They were always doing something. Quietly, without interrupting, and with great concentration, they carried on with the hundred-and-one small things that made up their world. It was a world that was very private, and self-contained, and to which nothing could be added. Like a map where everything has been discovered, everywhere inhabited, and where there are no bare patches left any longer.

(later)

The family got on his nerves at times - they could never stick to the matter in hand. He wondered whether all fathers found the same thing… He must try getting in the right mood, like his father-in-law used to do. All her life, his mother-in-law had gone round dropping things everywhere or leaving them behind and forgetting where she had left them. Then his father-in-law would turn on something in his brain.

Mark points out the Freudian link between 'melancholy' and a drooping 'tail' (and the solution is similarly phallic: the key to it all is literally a key, and it all reminds me of the many novels about male unemployment - these are the symptoms of masculine roles being removed. Moominpappa responds in the classic ways: toying with starting a forest fire to stage a rescue, spying on a family unit which seems to function well without him, contemplating home improvements to impress them, then moving them to a seemingly solid and stable old role - the lighthouse keeper, necessary and isolated. How different is this to the single father who kidnaps or kills his ex-wife/children?

Moominpappa looks for older models - the lighthouse keeper, his father-in-law, to regain a sense of male purpose, while Moominmamma quietly realises that this is a stage he needs to go through, without accepting the reactionary nature of some of these ideas. What strikes me is Tove Jansson's empathy (she lived on a little island too): she makes it clear that this aimlessness can be destructive, without ever suggesting that Moominpappa (or men) are monsters. Instead, they can be understood. All this - and it's a children's book, teaching them, very quietly, that their parents have passions, depressions, and problems, while never suggesting that adults are always right (Little My always pricks Moominpappa's pomposity). Moominpappa and Moominmamma seem to be closely based on Jansson's parents. The passages about the terrifying pull of the sea when Moominpappa is depressed is brilliant, really encapsulating the temptation of oblivion.

Thankfully, Moominpappa finds a key, and learns from the absent lighthouse keeper (God?) how to find a role:

Something clicked inside Moominpappa's head. Of course, everything was as clear as day. This was the place where the lighthouse-keeper came when he wanted to be entirely alone. A place for thought and meditation. And it was here that he had left the key so that Moominpappa should find it and take over the lighthouse. With great ceremony and the help of magic forces, Moominpappa had been chosen as the owner of the lighthouse and its keeper.

However - all this sounds like wish fulfilment, and so it transpires: the self-imposed duties of this so-symbolic role being to oppress Moominpappa. I haven't finished yet, so don't know what will happen, but I'm sure a balance will be struck. I'll let you know.

I am enjoying it too, by the way.

My visit to the post room brought great joy: Richard Overy's The Morbid Age: Britain Between The Wars, Byatt's The Children's Book (with a major protagonist from Stoke) and Pryce's From Aberystwyth With Love, which I'll take to All Tomorrow's Parties with me tomorrow. All have stunningly good cover designs too.