On The Guardian Music Blog, academic Paul Crowther writes:
Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt responds to the neo-conservative/global consumerist degradation of artistic value. It responds also to postmodern theory’s unwitting tendency (in its affirmation of relativism and anti-elitism in questions of value) to offer indirect support for this degradation. Both standpoints reduce the human subject to a nexus of ever-changing desires driven by economic and social demands. They privilege also the reception of artifacts over the significance of how they are created.
I read through the entire piece three times, and I still had trouble working out exactly what this guy’s argument was. In the end I came to the conclusion that what he’s actually saying is a rather banal observation of the bloody obvious. I think. But I’m not actually sure; it’s like a babelfish translation of an article from Hungarian; you think you get the gist of it, but there may some subtlety and nuance I’m not getting.
Why do academics write this sort of indigestible gobbledegook? Have they spent so long in the ivory towers of academia that they’ve lost the ability to make themselves comprehensible to the general public? Or do they use a deliberately obfuscatory style to try and disguise the fact that they don’t really have anything profound to say?
Or is the whole thing just a clever joke? The Guardian’s revenge on the commentariat mercilessly taking the piss out of stupid articles by Alan McGee week after week?
I didn’t have trouble following it (very slowly…), but I agree it’s not entirely suitable for a mainstream newspaper, and lacks focus.
It’s worth remembering, though, that Crowther is an academic, not a journalist, and he was invited to contribute by Jenkinson, himself not a journalist. It was misjudged, but I suspect Crowther provided precisely what was requested.
“They privilege also the reception of artifacts over the significance of how they are created.”
Is a very good point.
I think you’re being too charitable – you’re completely right that it lacks any kind of focus, and doesn’t seem have any central argument at all.
But I’d say the actual writing is pretty much indigestible for educated broadsheet readers, and I cannot understand why academics always write like that rather than express their arguments in straightforward English. I’d characterise it as seriously bad writing, in the same way as early Steven R. Donaldson was a very bad writing.
His punishment is to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” over and over until he either turns out something readable or gets a job better suited to his talents — like, say, editing grocery-store circulars.
“Or do they use a deliberately obfuscatory style to try and disguise the fact that they don’t really have anything profound to say?”
There is some research on this, which I’ll try and dig out, where academics are shown various texts all saying pretty much the same thing with half in normal English and some written as above. They all think that the badly written stuff has a better argument. Many of my University colleagues are just the same. I think that the weaker the argument the more obfuscation.