PMLA: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Ritual ribbing and roasting of the MLA as always this year. Everyone chatting around the fire. (See also here.) And Chun and I had a civil back-and-forth. But I can understand why people are tired of it, too. (Here's where we were this time last year.)

The problem, such as it is, is that the likes of Scott McLemee's Chron Piece - which he describes as an inconsequential squib - is obviously an inconsequential squib, not a platform engineered to take the strain as culture warriors and regular folks pile on heavily from all sides. It's therefore unfair to hold McLemee liable for injuries. On the other hand, I can see why - if you think the MLA isn't a complete joke - these pieces are frustrating. In effect, if not in intent, they foreclose serious debate. Since no other kind of piece on the MLA gets written for general consumption, everyone is now on a hairtrigger with their jokes and mockery. But the measure of serious scholarship should not be one's ability to soldier on reading your paper even though people in the audience are squeezing whoopee cushions at odd intervals. On the gripping hand, if something is funny, you are just plain allowed to make fun of it. That's some sort of moral rule.

The same goes for debate about the Bad Writing Contests "Philosophy and Literature" used to sponsor. I posted not long ago about a recent anthology devoted to defenses against such charges. I marvel at the uselessness, for it is no good pretending people don't have a right to make fun; it's even worse to arm oneself with obtuse refusals even to acknowledge that it's a joke, and treat it accordingly.

Here again one can sympathize, in a sense, with scholarly concern that mockery forecloses respectful, open, reasoned debate. But in another, more accurate sense, one cannot sympathize. Because the targets in question are not in the respectful, open, reasoned debate business. Take Judith Butler. In her NY Times op-ed, on the occasion of receiving her prize, she explains why it is necessary for scholars to produce such stuff (and, by implication, why such contests are deplorable):

Herbert Marcuse once described the way philosophers who champion common sense scold those who propagate a more radical perspective: "The intellectual is called on the carpet .... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you."

The accused then responds that "if what he says could be said in terms of ordinary language he would probably have done so in the first place." Understanding what the critical intellectual has to say, Marcuse goes on, "presupposes the collapse and invalidation of precisely that universe of discourse and behavior into which you want to translate it."

Mutatis mutandis, understanding how Bad Writing Contests are funny may presuppose the collapse and invalidation of precisely that universe of MLA discourse and behavior that is the butt of the joke. Judith Butler fails to apprehend the crucially performative aspect of this subversive critical work - the way in which Bad Writing Contests provide a voice to those on the margins by challenging the dominant hegemony of 'theory' in literary studies.

I could extend that riff, but you get the joke. Just as you give up the right to insist on hushed reverence for all things academic when you title your paper, "Dude, where's my reliable symbolic order?", so you give up your right to demand fair and open-minded consideration of your views when you yourself explicitly advocate adopting language which functions expressly to short-circuit critical dissent by presupposing that one's opponents are not just wrong but basically in a state of complete intellectual collapse. Given that this is her attitude, Judith Butler was never going to listen to Denis Dutton's criticisms of her views in any case. He is, as she says, the editor of "a small, culturally conservative academic journal". Being a figure on the margins - whom Butler is working to silence, by collapsing any language in which he can express his views - what does Dutton have to lose by mocking, rather than arguing?

So it is not just the case that Bad Writing Contests and squibs mocking the MLA are funny. Serious criticism is implicit. And yet ... when you philosophize with a hammer, every philosophical problem starts to look like a nail. It is hard to deny the MLA has taken a hammering. How fair is that? It seems worthwhile to set aside squibs and Bad Writing Contests - however delightful and instructive - and try to build a platform that will support more moderate and open consideration of such questions.

Since I am an inveterate and intemperate theory basher, and a firm believer that mockery and humor are acceptable weapons, I am an unlikely volunteer for such a (probably thankless) task. But one problem with my stuff is that, although I am sure there is a problem with 'theory' in literary studies - and I am fairly sure I know what it is, more or less - I can't say, honestly, that I'm in a position to say how serious or extensive it is. (See here for a moment of clarity.) I have run into this difficulty in trying to craft a good conclusion for my dialogue (PDF). So last week I went to the library and checked out the new bound edition of the first three issues of the PMLA ("Publications of the Modern Language Association") for 2003 and I read it cover to cover. Twice. 40 essays and articles of various lengths. 710 pages - minus ads, indexes, and organizational minutiae I permitted myself to skip. It wasn't easy. When I got to the third issue a quote from Heine cropped up, causing fellow-feeling to well profoundly in my breast:

I cannot promise you, dear reader, anything very captivating in the next chapter. If you become bored by the stupid stuff in it, console yourself by thinking of what a dreary time I must have had writing it! I would recommend that once in a while you skip several pages - for in that way, you will arrive much sooner at the end. Oh! How I wish I could do the same thing!

But my will was strong. This exercise was supposed to constitute a semi-blind, semi-valid test of various theses I advance in my dialogue. I'll give you the brutal short version of them. Theory is dead - but in the rather fraught sense in which God is dead for Nietzsche. Folks in literary studies still feel a rather obscure obligation to exhibit 'theoretical significance'. The result of feeling obliged to be theoretically significant when you don't actually believe in theory is not 'difficult' writing so much as a characteristic sort of philosophic kitsch. Denis Dutton uses that term in a WSJ piece:

The pretentiousness of the worst academic writing betrays it as a kind of intellectual kitsch, analogous to bad art that declares itself “profound” or “moving” not by displaying its own intrinsic value but by borrowing these values from elsewhere. Just as a cigar box is elevated by a Rembrandt painting, or a living room is dignified by sets of finely bound but unread books, so these kitsch theorists mimic the effects of rigor and profundity without actually doing serious intellectual work. Their jargon-laden prose always suggests but never delivers genuine insight.

In my dialogue I settle, more or less, on kitsch as the proper criterion of 'bad' writing. (It is obvious that 'difficulty' is neither here nor there, because the likes of Dutton - and myself - don't mind difficulty. And lots of bad, kitschy 'theory' writings are not, per se, difficult.) I quote the eminent musicologist (and student of Adorno, I believe) Carl Dahlhaus, on the distinguishing characteristics of musical kitsch:

Musical kitsch, whether rousing and high-flown or soothingly sentimental, is a decadent form of romantic music. When the noble simplicité of a classical style descends to the market place, the result is banality – the mere husks of classical forms – but hardly ever kitsch. Kitsch in music has hybrid ambitions which far outreach the capabilities of its actual structures and sounds, and are manifested in effects without cause, empty attitudinizing, and titles and instructions for performance which are not justified by the musical results. Instead of being content with modest achievements within its reach, musical kitsch has pretensions to big emotions, to “significance,” and these are rooted in what are still recognizably romantic preconceptions, however depraved.

In my dialogue I muse about how bad analytic philosophy is banal, never kitsch: highly formalized non-problems, handled with admirable rigor. Whereas bad 'theory' - perhaps one could say: bad continental philosophy - is kitsch, never merely banal. Romanticism gone rancid. Anyway, one sign that kitsch is really the problem is that a number of writers who reflexively fulminate against charges of 'bad writing' more or less grant the point about kitsch. An example is Peter Brooks (in Just Being Difficult) who wants to “evacuate the question of ‘bad writing’ and leave it for what it is, bad writing.” He then remarks that the literary criticism – theory in particular – is afflicted with, “a certain critical hyperventilation, the promotion into books of what should not be books, and the claim to significance where one would prefer a modest elucidation ... Each new book of literary and cultural criticism must be an individual performance, strenuous, original, self-inventing.” Many writers, “simply produce a kind of hypertrophy of rhetoric and alleged significance.” In short, kitsch.

It's all here, probably, if you keep scrolling down. Francis the Talking Mule knows all, sees all. That is his power.

But how much literary studies stuff is kitsch?

So little old I, three issues of the PLMA in hand, composed a tabular checklist, ticking off little boxes and taking copious notes as I went.

And - pardon me, dear reader, while I actually get to the point - it didn't turn out to be that bad. And, yes, I am keenly aware of the limitations of my methodology and instrumentation. Garbage in, garbage out. I am that garbage. We'll have to get back to that. I graded each piece on form and content. Here are the cold, hard, pseudo-quantitive results:

Form			Content
Good	OK	Bad	Good	OK	Trivial	Bad
4	34	2	6	12	14	8

My chart omits mentioning by name which pieces I found good, bad, ugly, so forth. This seems to me a sort of mercy. Sort of the reverse of giving some members of firing squads blanks, so no one will know who really shot the poor guy. I'm making it so none of the victims can really know he/she was executed. I would be annoyed if someone told google I wrote an ugly, trivial paper, then failed to offer any reasons. So I am withholding names. (If anyone is burning with curiosity about how I rated any given piece, send an email.) I am intending (but not promising) to turn this post into the first in a series, in which I discuss some of the papers in detail. But I don't intend to justify my judgment in every case. I did try to be quite charitable. It's one thing to snipe and rant as I tend to most days. Once you set out to do a survey, you have to calm down and be generous or the exercise is pointless. I wrestled with the snarky angel of my nature.

It might be objected however that, by not naming names, I have gravely slandered the journal as a whole - the editors, perhaps. If I don't say exactly what I don't like, no one can possibly respond. Well, let the chart be taken just as an expression of my overall impression of a big pile of papers I read. If you know what I'm like, you can infer what the PMLA is probably like. And if you think you know my biases and mental problems, you can recalibrate or ignore accordingly.

And here's another reason the editors shouldn't mind too much. My results are in a sense harsh - slightly more than half the material found to be valueless or worse - but I'm not sure that this is really as bad a result as people might have expected (given the dire state of the MLA's honor, according to some.) After all, it's me doing the judging; and it's generally agreed that most academic articles, in all fields, are pretty thin gruel due to chronic overproduction. If half a top journal's contents are worthless - so long as some of the content is quite good - is that so bad? Also, it seems noteworthy that there are twice as many well-written as badly-written pieces, and the vast majority turned out to be just so-so, formally speaking. And there were no funny titles, as it turned out.

I'd better explain the terms I use in my little chart. Formally 'good' writing has personality, notable clarity, a sharp edge or spring-heeled gait - anything that makes you sit up and take notice without benefit of coffee, after slogging through three or more pieces lacking these good qualities.

Formally 'OK' writing is a generous category, according to me. Scholars are licensed to write plodding, pedantic prose, within limits. (After all, scholars are often plodding pedants.) I do not propose to revoke this license. Scholars are also allowed to talk in silly ways. They may 'interrogate sites of hegemonic dominance' if they like, so long as what they actually mean can be adequately extracted with only a little extra effort.

Formally 'bad' writing is stuff that looks like it came out of the postmodernism generator. Or else it's got serious fascist octopus at the crossroads-type problems. (One of each of these types, in the event.)

I may seem to be begging the question about what counts as good and bad form. But I'm not, because you can tell what I'm talking about. If you think good writing looks like a Homi Bhabha essay, and Orwell was a poor deluded fool who thought it makes sense to say writing should be clear like a windowpane - then simply invert my results. I am saying that very little in the PMLA looks like Homi Bhabha, for better or worse; and some stuff in the PMLA is the antipodes of Bhabha, if you can stomach that sort of thing.

Content was graded as follows. 'Good' was supposed to mean - well, good. 'OK' was supposed to be a nod to the undeniable fact that most of these pieces are really supposed to appeal to specialists. (As Doctor Johnson observes of a lonely historian: his book shows "all the excellencies that narration can admit" concerning a subject "of which none desires to be informed." Alas, so it may be.) For purposes of my survey, I did my best to muster prosthetic, catholic enthusiasm. Since most of the pieces were historicist reflections on society and culture - and I'm all right with that - I think I did all right. But I probably tended to give 'good' grades to stuff that just plain appealed to me more. I tried to reserve 'OK' for pieces that could only be interesting to specialists, either because the presentation is in some way pointlessly off-putting or the kernel too slight, compared to the thick husk. I gave 'OK' to pieces that surely have little hope of inspiring anyone to be a specialist in a given area, because they are not winning advertisements for it.

'Trivial' requires some explanation. Roughly, it takes off from the Dahlhaus's quote about 'trivial' music, i.e. kitsch. Stuff like that - but intellectual, rather than musical - I deemed trivial. Of course, back on earth, this is just me making judgments. I am the kind of guy who thinks Judith Butler produces kitsch, so if she is actually a towering philosophical genius - then my kitsch-meter is way too twitchy, and you can adjust my results accordingly.

A schema for a not untypical 'trivial' paper: paper x argues for the constructedness/contingency - ergo arbitrariness - of concept/category/boundary y, on the basis of an examination of work(s) z. The exercise is trivial because the author regards it as deeply inappropriate to doubt that all concepts/categories/boundaries are constructed, etc., etc. So the paper employs an inappropriate style of argument (empirical argument for an a priori truth) to a conclusion the author him or herself must regard as too obvious to really bear mentioning. Doubts about the correctness of the paper's conclusions do not fall within the scope of the paper, as it were.

The effect, overall, is a sort of absent-minded epistemological itchiness. Authors generically scratching away at their categories and concepts while gazing with unfocused eyes at ... whatever they happen to be looking at. Quite a number of pieces struck me as trivial in more or less this way. But quite a number of pieces seemed trivial for other sorts of reasons. Mostly it seemed to me that bad 'theory' was a significant contributing factor. But sometimes it was just a case of things not coming together - very old-fashioned ways to fail.

What I just wrote is not at all adequate as an elucidation of 'trivial'. And the foregoing description of absent-minded epistemological itchiness - although unsightly irritation of the intellectual epidermis is common - is not drawn to the life either. Well, I'm doing my best. Only a blog post, you understand.

Maybe these pieces struck me as trivial because it is genuinely quite unclear why the authors themselves regard them as interesting. They aren't well-written, and don't make any attempt to draw the generally interested reader in - convince him or her a specific subject is especially interesting and worthy of study in its own right. I don't mean these pieces aren't infotainment. I am not demanding to be amused. I mean: if you aren't leaning on something, you've got to stand on your own two feet or you'll fall down. Most of these pieces don't stand on their own feet; but they aren't leaning on anything either. They are heavily inflected with 'theory', but it's too impressionistic and amateurish to be the point. There is no sense of shared methodology, unless it is a shared sense that no methodology can really be trusted; so pieces by different scholars can't be constructively coordinated. In the most elementary sense, there is no consensus whatsoever about what would constitute a good argument, or even good evidence. Certainly there are no overarching positive projects in view. But this really is a problem. If your piece is at best just a humble brick in the disciplinary wall, there had better be a wall. It's OK not to believe in such a wall - i.e. to think current categories all need to be radically interrogated, etc., etc. - but then you'd better find some way to stand on your own two feet. You can't expect to be valued as a scholar toiling worthily in some worthy little pidgeonhole if you don't believe in the hole, and don't believe it would be worth occupying if it did exist.

Moving right along.

'Bad' I reserved for pieces in which obvious and extremely embarrassing intellectual errors are committed. (In my opinion, of course.) So: if someone unreflectively presupposes radical social constructivism, by way of arguing for radical social constructivism - well, that's trivial. If someone offers a really, really awful but not tightly tautological argument for social constructivism - well, that's bad. (And, by the by, I didn't just fail people for being social constructivists. I only failed them for incompetence, which I recognize is not the same thing.) It is a nice question whether it is worse to perpetrate tautological emptiness with an aura of significance or egregious unsoundness/invalidity with an aura of significance.

That's enough for today.

I'll extend this series - or not - as time and inclination dictate.

Comments

[Adam Kotsko]

Even though I was a staunch defender of the enterprise of theory, I have to agree that well over half of the stuff published in journals generally is of no interest to anyone. During my obligatory tours of secondary literature, I often find myself thinking, "This is all it takes to get published?"

I am a fan of doing close textual analysis without having a clear expectation of what I will find -- that is, making some kind of an effort to let the text itself speak. Then bring in Baudrillard if you must, but I've read a few too many papers where the author clearly thought, for example, "White Noise reminds me of Baudriallard. I'm going to write a paper on my half-digested impression of Baudrillard and pair it with my fleeting impression of White Noise." Still, there is at least marginal value in this paper: it points out the possible connection between the two works and might inspire someone else to write a good paper on the same topic.

My standard for a good theoretical paper: one in which the work of literature itself is allowed to disagree with and even disprove the theory. For instance, one could do a paper about Lacan and Updike and set it up so that Updike would have a fair shot at being "better" than Lacan, rather than being taken as evidence for a theory that was accepted a priori.

Because -- and here I make my effort not to totally contradict everything I said on the last thread on this topic -- isn't this what all the "real" theory people do anyway? Derrida allows his philosophy to be informed by Artaud and Jabes and many different literary figures, without the assumption that they're of lesser significance. Lacan similarly engages in his own kind of literary criticism, and Heidegger obviously spent half his career exegeting a few poems. I know John doesn't especially like the figures I mention, but I just mention this to say that viewing them as some kind of immutable authority, for which literature can only serve as an illustration, contradicts the supposed authority's own intention.

[Ayjay]

So, John, how many essays achieved "good" in both categories, form and content? How many achieved "bad" in both? Another way to put this: do those who write badly tend also to think badly? It seems to be highly unlikely that any essay whose language seems to come out of the "postmodernism generator" could reveal much serious thought. This is not to deny that serious thought could have gone into it, but in an essay constructed almost wholly of chunks of jargon, how could you tell? Orwell wrote that "ready-made words and phrases" have a tendency to "think your thoughts for you." If there is any truth to that at all, then the distinction between form and content would be hard to maintain in this kind of situation. Bad style (that is, ready-made pseudo-theoretical words and phrases) simply IS bad content, isn't it?

[jholbo]

Thanks, Ayjay. The correlation is obviously important, and the reason I didn't include it in my announcement was that, frankly, I didn't trust myself to separate out the variables in grading sufficiently well that I could report a strong correlation as a result. (Of course, if I don't trust myself to grade, why do the exercise at all? Hmmm.) Anyway, both of the pieces that I graded as 'bad', formally, were also graded as 'bad' for content. But really I could just have easily have graded them as trivial. That might actually have been more accurate. (But I was in a foul mood. I think they both deserve to be deemed bad AND trivial.) On the positive side, three out of four of the well written pieces had good content. The fourth was a sort of funny case. In fact, they were all funny cases. I mean to have a follow-up post in which I explain a little better.

[jholbo]

Adam, just a quick comment. There is obviously not much point trying to parse too fine the semantics of 'tolerable' vs. 'trivial'. (You are basically agreeing with me overall. I see that.) But take your case of the bad DeLillo/Baudrillard paper. When it comes to half-digested matter, wrapped in superficial impressions - we can all roll our own, frankly, on a moment's notice. So 'this might inspire someone else to do better' is not really good enough to raise papers out of the triviality category into the 'this deserves to exist' category. (I doubt you really disagree.)

[Chun the Unavoidable]

I have a lot to say about this, but I don't understand why you dismiss the argument from inconsequentialism about Denis Dutton. It rather neatly explains the attention-getting stunt that was the "Bad Writing Contest."

I'm toying around with doing a similar piece using an analytic philosophy journal. I expect "needless formalism" and "aridity" to be major factors in the rankings.

[jholbo]

Hi, Chun, I'm not sure what exactly you are getting at about Dutton. There is, admittedly, an ambiguity in my presentation: first I say that this stuff is just a joke, i.e. inconsequential, then I sort of imply there is a point. That's not so clear. But that doesn't seem to be what you are hinting at. Anyway, feel free to clarify.

As to doing the same to an analytic philosophy journal: feel free. It would be entirely fair, and I would be stupefied if 'needless formalism' and 'aridity' didn't put in quite respectable showings. In fact, I will go further: it would be quite interesting to know to what degree an outsider found three issues of, say, "The Journal of Philosophy", to be worth reading.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

I mean that Butler has a good point about him and his journal being inconsequential; and, if you think that makes her some kind of hypocrite since she wishes to revoice the voiceless, typeset the marginalized, privilege alterity, etc., then you have a lot of explaining to do.

[jholbo]

Chun, I actually like "Philosophy and Literature" very much - as you know. Admittedly, my little off-the-cuff table-turn on Butler was a bit heavy handed. I don't actually think that Butler is a dreadful hypocrite. And I don't envision her as a sort of Madame DeFarge, clicking the knitting needles of performativity and gender, or anything like that. And I don't think that Denis "A & L Daily" Dutton needs any help finding an audience for the stuff he thinks is good. The problem with Butler's philosophy is that - so it seems to me - she spends her time crafting rhetorical strategies for presupposing that the opposition is wrong, which is basically dull in my book. So there is a certain 'turnabout is fair play' fairness to Dutton's response. I don't think that Dutton is a sympathy case, but there is a sense in which - within literary studies - his point of view is 'marginalized'. If Butler really values giving a voice to the marginalized, then she ought to be stepping aside so we can hear Dutton. Obviously she isn't, which just shows that what she really thinks is important is not privileging alterity, per se, but ... well, maybe she could be a little clearer about what the important thing really is.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

I haven't published anything in Philosophy and Literature, but I know people who have; and--let me tell you--it was no fun having to dodge the ladies spitting on them in the street at San Diego.

I think the journal sometimes publishes interesting stuff, but it's also been tainted by Dutton's kitschy brand of rightcultism. It's to the point where it looks as good on your cv as something in The New Criterion.

[Ophelia Benson]

Hmm.

"Scholars are also allowed to talk in silly ways. They may 'interrogate sites of hegemonic dominance' if they like, so long as what they actually mean can be adequately extracted with only a little extra effort."

Why, John? You probably have a reason, but you didn't say what it is. Why for the purposes of this discussion, I wonder, are scholars allowed to talk in silly ways? Particularly that kind of silly way? Isn't that particular kind of silly way part of the problem you're discussing? Or isn't it. If it is, why omit it? If it isn't...why isn't it?

These aren't rhetorical questions; I'm really curious.

[Adam Kotsko]

John, You're right that I don't really disagree.

Ophelia, Maybe he means that scholars are allowed to talk in apparently silly ways in those cases where, on further investigation, it turns out not to be really silly. For example, if the "common speech" way of saying "interrogate sites of hegemonic dominance" is excessively wordy, then "interrogate sites of hegemonic dominance" is justified as a piece of jargon. It's unclear how high the burden of proof should be for a particular jargon term -- the burden of proof likely varies in proportion to the reader's preferred field of inquiry, politics, favorite authors, astrological sign, etc.

[Ophelia Benson]

Adam,

Yup, it definitely is unclear which jargon is okay and which not. That's another one of those irregular verbs, of course. I use succinct, precise terminology, you use jargon, she uses trendy gibberish.

Oddly, I've noticed lately I tend to love sociological jargon. Degradation ceremony, moral panic, dyadic withdrawal - I love those. I wonder why I like those and seldom like the theory variety. Of course it could be mere prejudice, but I don't think it is quite that simple. I have some vague ideas about why, but they're pretty vague - so I won't bother stating them now.

I will say one thing though. One reason to love the sociological phrases is because they work in such an economical way to defamiliarize the familiar. Oh, degradation ceremony, of course, that's what's going on there! What an interesting way to describe it.

And theory jargon just doesn't seem to have that knack. It deadens rather than enlivening, sounds stale rather than new. Odd to think that sociologists are better with language than lit crits. That can't be right...

[Twn]

Sheesh. I guess the problem I have with "theory" is how it's perfectly useless to anyone but a professor or English grad student.

Read, learn & reflect. But don't waste time on theory, for heaven's sake -- do it on your own, without the dismal professors.

[jholbo]

Ophelia, your question is a reasonable one. I think there is (almost certainly) something kitschy about 'interrogate sites of hegemonic dominance' because it hints at rigor and technicality that is, in all likelihood, not forthcoming. So why give these pieces OK grades for form if my project is to sniff out offending kitsch?

I gave such things a pass if they stayed at the level of 'mostly harmless', e.g. if there was an overall low incidence of jargon. About the worst thing that can be said about such phraseology - in small amounts - is that it is vague. (You know that 'interrogating sites of hegemonic dominance' means 'looking at cases of the powerful being bad', at the very least.) But we think it's acceptable to write vaguely sometimes.

Adam is right that sometimes there is a sort of economy to this stuff, too. Sometimes what you need is a way to express a vague thought briefly. And sometimes - rarely, but it happens - someone is actually using 'hegemonic', for example, as a technical term of some sort. That can happen.

[jholbo]

Maybe I should add that by 'low incidence' I mean: maybe just a sentence or two per page is jargony, and the rest is jargon-free.

And I see now that my response to Adam's point was too slighting. He is pointing out that sometimes jargon can be an efficient way of making a definite point. Whereas I rather impatiently divide it into two piles: vague and technical. This leaves out the possibility of definiteness of content without technicality. Fair enough.

[Ophelia Benson]

Yup, I can accept that, John (am I generous or what). I can see using 'hegemonic' (other people using it, that is; by now it would be sure to make me break out in a rash if I tried, but that's just me). But all four in a small space, plus the added effect of having all four in a small space which makes the four more like about eleven - that I have grave reservations about. But perhaps you yourself piled them up that way, like a small traffic mishap, in the enthusiasm of posting, and in fact the articles you gave an ok avoided the clotting effect. At any rate, I'll stop quibbling now. Gotta go, I have tickets to a degradation ceremony.

[Ray]

Chun, you're a fortunate writer if you're able to avoid any publishers tainted by kitsch. Few among my heroes had valuable CVs before they reached retirement age.

I read everything (except possibly my own weblog) as an outsider, and I'll admit I get less from analytic philosophy journals than from "Philosophy and Literature", and get not noticeably more from "Philosophy and Literature" than from "PMLA" or "Critical Inquiry". As I've said before, most of the attackers of "difficulty" are at least as dull as what they're attacking, and dullness is the real enemy (to us outsiders).

The question I posed Francis was why I (as a fairly early outside admirer of Derrida, anyway) don't get nearly as much from *any* of those journals as from "Behavioral & Brain Sciences" or a good weblog or a good fanzine (or the latest issue of "Paradoxa", or an old issue of the "James Joyce Quarterly"). As John Holbo indicates, post-structuralist rhetoric promises a revolution of carnival jouissance, and so we're especially prone to hoot and boo if we're then presented with the same old awkwardly puffed-up Frog Kings. Yes, I know everyone has to make a living, but if you're making a living at hedonism, shouldn't some pleasure other than self-aggrandizement be manifest? I hate to think that Godard was right in having his wife mouth "Pleasure is no fun."

[Josh Lukin]

Dammit, Ray, The Bellona Times is a web journal. "Weblog" indeed. Next you'll be using bastard neologisms like "sci-fi."

I've had the sense, based in part on the gossip in The Profession, for some time that the authors of Trivial papers who don't mind the possibility of their work being editorially pounded into a house style know that PMLA is the journal to go for. A survey of MFS or ALH might produce better results. Among journals where theory is meant to dominate, Diacritics used to represent the cutting edge. Dunno what shape it's in now.

[Ophelia Benson]

Yeah, same here. Butterflies and Wheels is a website or an internet resource or a sort of magazine - not no weblog. And it is of course enthralling. Obviously.

[sessilepolyp.com]

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[sessilepolyp.com]

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