Worst Writers?

[TripWillis]

That's interesting because I find Butler to be not only lucid but very quotable/zingy. So many times I've found little blurbs in her writing that affect me so much more than other theory writers. I love the phrase "an identity tenuously constituted in time." I also love this quote from Undoing Gender, and I'm going to shamelessly plug it:

“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so when we speak about my sexuality or my gender, as we do (and as we must), we mean something complicated by it. Neither of these is precisely a possession, but both are to be understood as modes of being dispossessed, ways of being for another, or, indeed, by virtue of another.”

Very punchy, in my opinion!

I s'pose I'm a good old fashioned minimalist. I think Butler beats her central concepts to death with words. I understand that the idea behind her style of writing is partially based on subverting a patriarchal aesthetic standard of writing, which I'm down with, but so many times (particularly in Gender Trouble) I notice her going for the "more is more" approach to accomplish this. And, really, does anyone need 7 coordinating clauses in a sentence? Ever? Small bites! Edit: Let me be clear -- I'm talking about the middle section of Gender Trouble -- the bookends are pretty accessible)

Also, I like Butler. I'm quibbling. With D&G I like the concept of the rhizome, but I could take or leave the BWO.

Edited December 7, 2011 by TripWillis

[rainy_day]

I like Foucault. Derrida is just verbal masturbation to me.

Oh, I love Derrida. I kind of love them all, actually.

Because I am a masochist.

Although I think she's super brilliant and I love her, Spivak is one of the most difficult theorist to read, imo.

Edited December 8, 2011 by rainy_day

[rainy_day]

I s'pose I'm a good old fashioned minimalist. I think Butler beats her central concepts to death with words. I understand that the idea behind her style of writing is partially based on subverting a patriarchal aesthetic standard of writing, which I'm down with, but so many times (particularly in Gender Trouble) I notice her going for the "more is more" approach to accomplish this. And, really, does anyone need 7 coordinating clauses in a sentence? Ever? Small bites! Edit: Let me be clear -- I'm talking about the middle section of Gender Trouble -- the bookends are pretty accessible)

Also, I like Butler. I'm quibbling. With D&G I like the concept of the rhizome, but I could take or leave the BWO.

It's interesting that you say this, because I think Butler gets *a lot* more readable as the years progress. My theory is that, with Gender Trouble, she was writing against the world, in a way, having to prove every single little point. But now--she's Judy B! She doesn't need to explain that gender is performative; we mostly buy that idea (or at least respect that it's a legible theoretical position). Undoing Gender, for example, is highly readable I think! (As far as theory goes, of course.)

[TripWillis]

It's interesting that you say this, because I think Butler gets *a lot* more readable as the years progress. My theory is that, with Gender Trouble, she was writing against the world, in a way, having to prove every single little point. But now--she's Judy B! She doesn't need to explain that gender is performative; we mostly buy that idea (or at least respect that it's a legible theoretical position). Undoing Gender, for example, is highly readable I think! (As far as theory goes, of course.)

When I told my thesis advisor that (upon reading Judith Butler) I didn't find the theory of gender performativity to be the most revolutionary thing, or a particular surprise to me, his reasoning was that (and he is gay and we have a rapport) possibly because I am bisexual, I am already constituted with the ideas of gender fluidity by sheer practice. In other words, I've been participating in subversive bodily acts for most of my adult life.

Edited December 8, 2011 by TripWillis

[vordhosbntwin]

here's a nice little quip from adorno for all of the hegel-haters: "He who entrusts himself to Hegel will be led to the threshold at which a decision must be made about Hegel's claim to truth. He becomes Hegel's critic by following him. From the point of view of understanding, the incomprehensible in Hegel is the scar left by identity-thinking. Hegel's dialectical philosophy gets into a dialectic it cannot account for and whose solution is beyond its omnipotence. Within the system, and in terms of the laws of the system, the truth of the nonidentical manifests itself as error, as unresolved, in the other sense of being unmastered, as the untruth of the system; and nothing that is untrue can be understood. Thus the incomprehensible explodes the system" (Drei Studien zu Hegel).

[HaruNoKaze]

Donald Davidson tbh, his stuff is so hard to read / make sense of.

Also seconding Grunty that sometimes the translations are just bad, encumbersome, and make things more difficult to read.

I like Davidson. I wrote a paper on him once. The first time we covered his work in my epistemology class I kept getting confused and calling him David Donaldson. Embarrassing.

[TripWillis]

I want to also nominate Henry Louis Gates Jr. I like Signifying Monkey, but there's something about the way it's written that just bothers me.

[Origin=Goal]

@ vordhosbntwin Great Adorno quote (though that seems to deal more so with the famous disjuncture between the dialectic and the "untrue," totalizing system Hegel intended to superimpose over his method).

For me the prize goes to Heidiegger though for me much post-structuralist thought (pace Derrida) is obfuscated language-fetishism.

[Aubergine]

You'll run into the kind of problems exemplified by Deleuze and Kristeva, in part, because of the translation.

I had a prof once say that if you think Deleuze is a bad writer, it's the translation. And I totally agree. For me, he's one of the good ones. Spivak, on the other hand, I find difficult. Though I haven't read any in a while. Whitehead is also super difficult, but I adore him anyway.