Use good words, not bad ones

Use good words, not bad ones

Mar 25th 2015, 22:07 by R.L.G. | BERLIN

• 

"WRITE with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs" is a traditional bit of style advice. The aim is to get young writers picking a few words that tell, rather than bulking out their prose in the hopes of convincing by sheer mass.

But does good writing really prefer nouns and verbs over adjectives and adverbs? Mark Liberman of the Language Log blog and the University of Pennsylvania tried a brief experiment, choosing several pieces of "good" writing (both fiction and non-fiction) and "bad" writing (such as two winners of the "Bad Writing Contest" competition and an archetypally purple novel of 1830, "Paul Clifford", which begins with "It was a dark and stormy night"). The surprising result was that the "good" selection had relatively more verbs and adverbs, and the "bad" writing, relatively more nouns and adjectives.

How can usage-book writers have failed to notice that good writers use plenty of adverbs? One guess is that they are overlooking many: much, quite, rather and very are common adverbs, but they do not jump out as adverbs in the way that words ending with –ly do. A better piece of advice than "Don't use adverbs" would be to consider replacing verbs that are combined with the likes of quickly, quietly, excitedly by verbs that include those meanings (race, tiptoe, rush) instead.

Why would good writers use more verbs? One reason is that if unnecessary words are reduced, the verb-percentage goes up as a mathematical necessity. Ordinary sentences require a verb, whereas they do not require any other part of speech. Imperatives need no subject (Run!), and sentence fragments can make sense without explicit subjects: Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. By contrast, it is hard to write without verbs. So "use verbs" is not really good advice either, since writers have to use verbs, and trying to add extra ones would not turn out well.

What about nouns? There is a likely culprit for the high percentage of nouns in Mr Liberman's counts in "bad" prose: "nominalisations", also known as "zombie nouns". Abstract words are necessary for any language: you cannot have just rocks and trees and water, but need a few phenomena and increases and observations. But too many have a narcotic effect. Judith Butler, in the essay that won the 1997 Bad Writing Contest, uses account, relations, ways, hegemony, relations, repetition, convergence, rearticulation, question, temporality, thinking, structure, shift, theory, totalities, objects, insights, possibility, structure, conception, hegemony, sites, strategies, rearticulation and power—all in a single sentence. It is not much clearer with the other words added.

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Part of the reason why such writing bamboozles is that no one has ever seen or stubbed a toe on a rearticulation or a temporality. Abstract words make the brain do hard work. This is not always a bad thing—some good writing is difficult. But, by and large, a good style will at least dole out "metaconcept" words—words about ideas—either in manageable sentences, or broken up with more concrete nouns.

That leaves us with the adjective. The key, again, is to choose wisely. "Paul Clifford" begins like this:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way.

This is not the purplest prose of all time, but note how many adjectives are useless. Does "dark" add to the night? "Violent" to a sweeping gust of wind? If "a man" is wending his way, must we be told that it is a "solitary" one? Trying as a rule to eliminate adjectives will lead to some odd writing. But as with all words, they are best if they tell you something you didn't already know.

There is a lot to criticise in journalistic writing. But in one way, it is good training: print journalism forces writers to put complex stories into a box defined by an editor and competing stories. Every journalist moans about favourite phrases, sentences and whole stories cut from articles. But keeping to a tight word count forces the writer to think about which words absolutely have to be there, and makes it less likely that the editor will kill the writer's darlings. So while simple formulae such as "write with nouns and verbs" may not be brilliant style advice, one short piece of advice is worth taking: edit.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Why Do We Need the Humanities?

By Rod Dreher • March 19, 2015, 8:41 AM

• 
• 

At The New Republic, four former university presidents offer short reflections on why the humanities are relevant to college education. An example of the reasoning on offer:

In my experience, business leaders and employers recognize the value of this marriage and look for it in our graduates. It is clear that to thrive in a society where they may have up to six different careers, business and STEM graduates need also to be curious and creative, to be critical thinkers and good communicators.

Mark Bauerlein at First Things says this instrumental justification for the humanities is a big part of the problem. Excerpt:

Unfortunately, even if true, those affirmations will not increase the popularity of humanities courses. What sophomore will be drawn to a course in Renaissance sculpture because it will enhance her critical thinking skills?

Only the actual materials will sustain the humanities, but we have to believe in them enough to say so. We need more conviction than this. We need to be able to say to incoming students, "In this course, you are going to encounter words and images and ideas that are going to change your life. We've got Hamlet and Lear, Achilles and David, Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Bennett, Augustine's pears and Van Gogh's stars—beauty and sublimity and truth. If you miss them, you will not be the person could be."

I think that's true. As you will no doubt tire of hearing between now and the time How Dante Can Save Your Life plays itself out, reading The Divine Comedy in a time of great personal crisis gave me a new vision of life, and brought me out of that crisis. My experience of the Commedia was exactly what Bauerlein describes above. Granted, I am ideologically predisposed to agree with Bauerlein, but it took a life-changing experience with this great work of art to make the principle real to me.

I did not come to Dante in an instrumental way, thinking that reading a Great Book would be edifying. I came to it because Dante's plotting and language set the hook in me hard. I quickly came to see that this 14th-century poem about a lost and broken man's pilgrimage to healing and wholeness had an enormous amount to do with me. Dante taught me to see myself, my world, and my God in a new light. I could have read all the moral, psychological, and theological principles at work in the Commedia in a nonfiction book. But they would not have affected me in the same way. As I write in the book, there is now neuroscientific research showing that our brains are wired to receive information more effectively if it is conveyed in the form of a story, and not only that, but if the story is conveyed in a way that we find beautiful. We are built to experience the world as story, as revelation; beauty really is a gateway to truth.

I have told the story of my life-changing experience with Dante as a story, for precisely this reason. How Dante is not really a book of literary analysis (though there is some of that), and it's not a connect-the-dots instruction book. Rather, I'm trying to imitate to some degree Dante's strategy: instead of telling you "do this," I'm showing you how "doing that" worked in my experience, and, I hope, encouraging you to do the same.

I didn't really know what I was doing at the time. I quickly became aware that I was reading the Commedia like a man lost at sea clings to a piece of driftwood, hoping it will carry him to dry land. But I didn't start it thinking, "Ah, this Great Book will make me a better person, so I shall endeavor to read it for the sake of character building." The trick, I think, was to have opened myself wholly to the story instead of sitting back from a certain distance, experiencing it as a literary artifact. The poet seduced me, and I willfully suspended belief and read it as if it were an account of something that actually happened. This is what we always do when we really get into a novel. I think that's how Dante worked his magic on me.

To go back to Bauerlein's point: I agree that we won't get very far if we try to tell students that they should study the humanities because they will learn skills that will make them more effective at their jobs. How could you ever prove such a thing? And even if you could, it seems to me that some business school professor could come back and offer a course in Critical Thinking Skills that would cut through all the literary and aesthetic business to get right to the practical point.

It seems to me, based on my personal experience, that the better approach is to present the humanities as a romantic adventure in the search for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I had a pretty spotty humanities education, so you can imagine how thrilling it was for me to study The Odyssey with my 12 year old son, and to encounter it for the first time. It was adventure, it was joy, it was deep. And it was all a surprise to me, even though it ought not to have been.

I suppose one reason that it's hard for colleges to teach the humanities in this way is that so many in the academy have murdered the humanities to dissect them for the sake of exposing how they're all about power relationships and so forth. It's like going to a liturgy led by a priest who doesn't believe in the religion, and who uses his sermons to disenchant the congregation.

But I think it's also true that we as a society have lost the sense that within the study of art, literature, and the humanities, there are things vital to shaping our souls, and to discovering and taking into ourselves what it means to be fully human. That Homer, Dante, Milton, Cervantes, Michelangelo, and all these great men saw more deeply into the human experience than almost any other, and came back to tell us what they learned, and to help us see what they saw. In the end, I think it comes down to a deadening of the soul among our people — that is, a sense that there is no need to learn or to experience anything beyond what we desire to learn and experience, because our desires are self-justifying, and do not need cultivation.

We keep returning on this blog, in various threads, to an argument in which a number of people sincerely don't understand why so many of us traditionalist-minded folks see the present moment as a time of darkness, or at least not a time of uncomplicated enlightenment. After all, we are healthier and wealthier than at any time in history, and many of the indicators of social well being (e.g., the crime rate) show that we are safer and more at peace, and no generations have had more personal liberty to define their own lives as do Americans living now. How can this not be enough?

Well, let me ask you: there may be no healthier (in terms of the body), wealthier, safer, more peaceful, and free than Beverly Hills. Would you describe the people living there as at the pinnacle of human history? The Kardashians have it all; they are so rich and free that one of their number is changing his sex, because he can — and some call it, without irony, and in fact with enthusiasm, a superb example of the American Dream. I think there is something to that description, insofar as America has become all about liberating individual desire from the chains of the past, of prescription, of limits, of tradition, of any bounds.

But that is a nightmare to me, and not because I think it's yucky for Bruce Jenner to choose to become a woman. It's a nightmare for the same reason that Ulysses's inspiring speech to his crew in Inferno XXVI is such a deadly deception, cloaking something base in the rhetoric of nobility. It's the oldest lie in the world: Ye shall be as gods. To read Dante is to become aware of how the human heart deceives itself, and the mind's eye loses its ability to see.

To immerse oneself in humanities is to become deeply acquainted with the most enduring wisdom of our species, to encounter what is best and what is worst in man, to learn to place ourselves within the Great Narrative of humanity, and to discover how we can and should write our own chapter, not as passive barbarians — rich in health, wealth, and liberty thought we may be — propelled through life by our own disordered desires, but rather as intelligent men and women who aspire to live by the better angels of our natures.

You know what I hope? That How Dante Can Save Your Life is a success, and opens the door to many others, both students and older people, to reading the Commedia. And more than that, I hope it inspires other people write similar books about how going deep into Shakespeare, or Homer, or Milton, or the Italian Renaissance, and so forth, liberated them from the shackles of mundanity, and delivered them from the oppression of thinking, "Is this all there is?"

No, this is not all there is. The great humanists saw farther and deeper than you and I do. They have so much to show us. But first, we have to make a leap of faith in which we give ourselves over to their visions. We are all like Dante at the beginning of the poem, standing in a dark wood, unsure whether we can trust anybody. Put yourself in the pilgrim's shoes, standing there looking at the ghost of an ancient poet, a man whose work you revere. As I write in How Dante:

The shade of an ancient poet appears and promises to deliver you from your misery but says that the road ahead is going to be arduous, even horrible. A reasonable man would have said to the ghost, "Wait a minute, you died ages ago. I must be having a hallucination. How do I know you are who you say you are? I have to think about this." But the pilgrim did not say that.

Nor did he say, "Thanks, but I'll wait here; things might get better." He didn't say, "How can I trust that you know the way out? Maybe you are wrong. Maybe you will lead me to ruin." And Dante didn't say, "Show me the whole picture, the entire map ahead, and then I will follow you."

He said none of those things. He simply said, "I trust you, and I will follow you." That was a leap of faith.

Though Virgil had been sent by God, via his messenger Beatrice, on a mission to save Dante, the master didn't lay it all out for the lost pilgrim in their first meeting. Dante was in no condition to see the whole picture. All Dante knew in that moment was that if he stayed where he was, he would suffer and die—and that before him stood an authority figure he trusted to lead him to safety.

Reading those opening lines, it struck me: I am Dante, and Dante is offering to be my Virgil.

Note well that Dante the pilgrim didn't choose to follow Virgil because he thought all that walking would do him good, or because it sounded like fun. He didn't follow Virgil because he knew exactly where the journey was going to lead in the end. Dante gave himself over to Virgil because he knew that he could no longer stay in the dark wood, for he would die, and because he trusted the older man to take him to a better place, in the end. The Commedia is really a journey into our own hearts.

If academicians would present the humanities as romance, as mystery, as passion-filled voyages of discovery, as opposed to the dull, technocratic rationales given by these college presidents, maybe they would find more young people coming to embrace their study. If professors would rediscover why they fell in love with art and literature in the first place — the wonder of it all! — maybe they would convert others.

If the professionals approached the humanities not as scientists, but as witnesses, maybe the humanities would live again. Great works of art and literature are ghosts who appear to us in the dark wood, and offer us a way to enlightenment. But first you have to believe that enlightenment is both possible and desirable. I don't know, I'm probably hopelessly naive here, but all I can tell you is this: I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see — and I owe much to Dante Alighieri and his miraculous poem.

It can happen to you, too.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Comment dit-on "liberté" à Pékin ? Les 7 notions-clés de la pensée chinoise

C'est comme une table de correspondance. A gauche: les grandes notions de la pensée européenne. A droite: leurs équivalents dans la pensée chinoise. Une sorte de dictionnaire, aussi soucieux d'expliquer que de mettre en valeur la différence.

Par exemple, la rationalité européenne, dont nous nous glorifions tant, est fondée sur l'idée de «causalité»: un effet est dû à une cause. La Chine, elle, pense en termes de «propension»: un objet donné aura tendance à évoluer d'une façon donnée. Causalité ou propension: voilà l'écart, en apparence bénin, mais en réalité très profond, où se joue la différence entre deux visions du monde. Avec son «Lexique euro-chinois», François Jullien permet au lecteur non-spécialiste la saisir avec une précision fascinante.

François Jullien est une figure singulière dans la philosophie française. Normalien, agrégé, il décide en 1975 de partir en Chine pour y apprendre non pas le maoïsme, comme c'était la mode à l'époque, mais la pensée chinoise classique.

D'une immense érudition, maîtrisant les grands textes de l'empire du Milieu, il aurait pu se contenter d'être un passeur entre deux civilisations aussi puissantes qu'ignorantes l'une de l'autre. Il a fait encore mieux: cette connaissance de la Chine, il n'a cessé de la retourner vers l'Europe et de s'en servir pour mettre à jour les présupposés de la pensée occidentale. On ne trouvera rien chez lui qui ressemble à de l'exotisme ou de l'orientalisme; le dialogue entre les deux façons de pensée est immédiatement égal, et au profit des deux parties.

Dans « De l'Etre au Vivre. Lexique euro-chinois de la pensée», Jullien nous propose une vingtaine de doublets: «liberté/disponibilité», «volonté/ténacité», «cohérence/sens», «révélation/régulation», «vérité/ressource»…

Au fil des pages, le philosophe montre la fascination de l'Europe pour «l'être» et en particulier pour le «sujet» supposé libre, singulier, autonome, posé en surplomb du monde, «maître et possesseur de la nature», selon la formule de Descartes. Et il met en regard une vision chinoise où l'individu tire sa consistance du collectif et de tout ce qui l'entoure, pleinement immergé dans le monde, «partie prenante» d'un réseau de choses et de tensions dont il ne saurait se détacher.

Jullien illustre cet écart par la peinture : là où la tradition européenne propose des «paysages» qui placent l'observateur à l'extérieur, la peinture chinoise peint des «montagne-eau» («shan-shui», traduction de paysage en chinois) qui plongent celui qui les regarde au beau milieu des forces de la nature en action (la montagne puissante, l'eau qui ondoie...).

Souvent, Jullien suggère que la pensée chinoise est une incitation à la «déprise», à la fluidité, à l'ouverture. L'Occident apparaît alors engoncé dans son désir, son obsession de la volonté et du contrôle, sa passion de la raison. Mais le philosophe met en garde: la pensée chinoise n'est pas le remède-miracle aux pathologies de l'Occident. La «déprise» chinoise est un merveilleux antidote à l'abus de rationalité… tant que l'on n'en abuse pas à son tour.

Notre capacité à observer le monde en nous plaçant à l'extérieur a été, souligne-t-il, à l'origine de formidables progrès techniques, politiques et éthiques. La Chine a autant à apprendre de nous que nous d'elle :

Il ne s'agit pas de se convertir à une autre culture ou de chercher un quelconque compromis. Je tiens aux valeurs des Lumières et je ne vais pas en Chine pour penser la liberté, car ce n'est pas leur point fort. J'y vais pour m'ouvrir à une autre façon d'être dans le monde.

Pour BibliObs, François Jullien présente ici sept «correspondances». Le principe est simple : dans chaque doublet, le premier terme est une notion européenne, le second est son «répondant» chinois.

Causalité →  Propension

La causalité est au départ de toute la pensée occidentale. Nous ne décrivons pas la chose qui est devant nous, nous l'expliquons. Et nous l'expliquons en sortant de la chose pour en trouver la cause à l'extérieur d'elle-même. Les Grecs étaient à la recherche de la "cause première", par exemple Dieu; et "cause" et "chose" ont la même racine en latin. Saisir la chose par la cause: ce schéma est au fondement de la "science".

La Chine, quant à elle, raisonne moins en termes d'explication que d'implication. C'est que je propose de nommer la "propension": il s'agit de ne plus séparer la chose de la façon dont elle évolue. La notion de propension vaut alors pour le savoir comme pour l'histoire (notion de shi).

Lorsque les historiens chinois relatent la naissance de l'empire, ils ne recherchent pas des causes, mais décrivent la propension globale de la société chinoise à tendre vers cette forme de gouvernement. En Occident, le concept de propension est resté marginal; mais peut-être le modèle de la causalité a-t-il trouvé sa limite.

Initiative du sujet →  Potentiel de la situation

Dans la philosophie européenne, tout commence par le "je" (Descartes). L'homme est pensé comme "sujet", qui conçoit et qui veut, qui est sujet d'initiative, en se posant au début des choses.

La pensée chinoise préfère partir de la situation en explorant son potentiel. Le moteur de l'action, mais qui n'a plus besoin alors d'être une "action", n'est pas tant "l'initiative du sujet" que le "potentiel de la situation" (même notion de shi)

Le stratège, figure éminemment chinoise, n'est pas celui qui établit des plans, ou compte sur un "coup de génie" (notons cette passion paradoxale de l'Occident pour ces trous dans sa rationalité...). Le sage-stratège chinois est plutôt celui qui discerne les facteurs favorables pour infléchir la situation à son profit.

Liberté →  Disponibilité

Obsédé par la causalité, l'Occident n'a cessé de se demander comment l'individu peut s'en affranchir. Ne pas obéir à nos déterminations est un idéal auquel on a donné le nom de "liberté". Le moi-sujet est d'abord doué de liberté: c'est là sa qualité première et d'où vient sa valeur.

Les Grecs ont opposé la liberté à la servitude et ont affirmé leur exigence de liberté face aux Perses, avant d'en faire l'idéal de la cité, puis de la vie intérieure. La Chine n'a pas connu cette expérience politique, mais a développé en revanche ce que j'appellerai la disponibilité.

La liberté implique un choix; la disponibilité revient à dissoudre toute position, à ne plus prendre parti, à être entièrement "ouvert", à ne projeter aucun a priori, ce qui permet de ne rien rater. Confucius disait que le sage est "sans nécessité, sans idée, sans position, sans moi". Freud entrevoyait-il une telle disponibilité lorsqu'il expliquait que l'analyste doit se mettre en position d'"attention également flottante"?

Néanmoins, il ne faut pas se leurrer : être disponible, c'est aussi rester soumis à l'autorité. Car, en politique, on est toujours d'un côté ou de l'autre, et ne pas prendre position revient à de l'inféodation. On comprend pourquoi le lettré chinois n'a pas su dire frontalement "J'accuse".

Sincérité →  Fiabilité

En Occident, nous avons proscrit le mensonge. D'Augustin à Kant, il est absolument interdit de mentir, quelle que soit la situation. Derrière est la figure de Dieu, qui voit au fond des cœurs. C'est oublier que le mensonge est situationnel, se fait toujours à deux : si mon fils me ment, c'est que je ne sais pas entendre sa vérité – voilà le genre de situation où la notion de "sujet" autonome touche sa limite.

En Chine, l'importance est moins la transparence que la confiance, ou la "fiabilité", xin, qui se bâtit peu à peu. Il y faut du processus. Quand on est parvenu à cette confiance, il n'est même plus besoin de le dire. Pour Confucius, l'impératif est moins de dire ce qu'on pense que de faire ce qu'on dit. Certes, on peut être choqué par ce qui ressemble à de la dissimulation. Mais sait-on vraiment ce qu'on pense, et faut-il en faire un dogme? Les Chinois soulignent à juste titre qu'ils n'ont jamais fait de guerres de religion.

 

Frontalité →  Obliquité

Notre espace politique est organisé autour de l'affrontement. A Athènes, à la guerre comme à l'assemblée, c'est du face-à-face que doit venir la décision: la bataille rangée ou discours contre discours, thèse et antithèse. La Chine préfère l'obliquité, l'indirect, le biais, qi. Dans un rapport frontal, on se détruit l'un l'autre, il y a perte. En Chine, la critique politique est contrainte à l'indirect du fait de la censure; mais aussi les lettrés chinois en ont fait un art, d'autant plus dangereux. 

Déjà, l'un des tous premiers textes chinois consacrés à la poésie conseillait de garder le sens tamisé à travers l'image, afin de ne pas risquer sa tête. Et voyez comment récemment, avec la démaoïsation, le Parti communiste chinois a été capable de se transformer radicalement, mais par transformation silencieuse de son discours, en laissant sous-entendre progressivement son évolution plutôt que d'ouvertement dire le contraire. Il faut toujours compter sur un processus.

Révélation → Régulation

La Révélation, et son double laïque la Révolution, structure notre perception du temps et de l'Histoire. Il nous faut toujours un avant et un après. En Chine, on évite la rupture dans le continuum temporel et l'on préfère la régulation à des règles ou normes fixées d'avance. La régulation signifie que l'équilibre se maintient à travers le changement: que parce qu'il ne dévie pas, le cours des choses peut se renouveler. Ce que les Chinois révèrent dans la notion de Ciel, tian.

Contrairement à la règle, la régulation ne se modélise pas, elle ne se décrète pas. Ainsi la médecine chinoise est-elle une médecine de la régulation, plutôt que de l'opération. Plutôt que de combattre la maladie, mieux vaut d'abord réguler la santé en évitant la déviation.

Au-delà → Entre

Les Grecs ont promu l'au-delà et ils y ont logé le Bien, le Juste, le Vrai… C'est là tout le sens de la métaphysique. Ils ont dédoublé le monde, en distinguant l'ici-bas de la réalité empirique et l'au-delà des idéalités. La vérité est toujours au-delà, à l'extrémité. D'où leur goût des dichotomies et des oppositions tranchées.

Ce dispositif a eu son efficacité, non seulement en théorie mais dans l'Histoire. C'est grâce à lui que l'intellectuel s'est imposé comme figure et sujet autonome: face au pouvoir, il pouvait se réclamer de ce monde de l'idéalité.

Mais du coup les Grecs ont négligé l'"entre" des choses, tout ce qui est médian et par là indistinct. Aristote sait définir le blanc et le noir, mais non le gris. Car l'"entre" n'a pas d'en-soi, pas de nature propre: il n'a pas d'essence. Mais c'est à travers ce vague, ce flou de l'indéterminé, que passe la vitalité du monde, le flux de la respiration. L'idéogramme qui signifie "entre" illustre bien cette idée, jian : il est composé des deux ventaux d'une porte sous laquelle passe un rayon de lune.

Propos recueillis par Eric Aeschimann

De l'Etre au Vivre. Lexique euro-chinois de la pensée,
par François Jullien, Gallimard, 312 p., 18,90 euros.

Les 1ères pages de "De l'Être au Vivre" 

De l'Être au Vivre. Lexique euro-chinois de la pensée
publié par editions-gallimard

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

How English Ruined Indian Literature

By AATISH TASEERMARCH 19, 2015

Photo

Credit Damien Poulain

NEW DELHI — A BOATMAN I met in Varanasi last year, while covering the general election that made Narendra Modi prime minister of India, said, "When Modi comes to power, we will send this government of the English packing."

The government of the English! The boatman naturally did not mean the British Raj; that had ended nearly 70 years before. What he meant was its extension through the English-speaking classes in India. He meant me, and he could tell at a glance — these things have almost the force of racial differences in India — that I was not just a member of that class, but a beneficiary of the tremendous power it exerted over Indian life.

"English is not a language in India," a friend once told me. "It is a class." This friend, an aspiring Bollywood actor, knew firsthand what it meant to be from the wrong class. Absurd as it must sound, he was frequently denied work in the Hindi film industry for not knowing English. "They want you to walk in the door speaking English. Then if you switch to Hindi, they like it. Otherwise they say, 'the look doesn't fit.' " My friend, who comes from a small town in the Hindi-speaking north, knew very well why his look didn't fit. He knew, too, from the example of dozens of upper-middle class, English-speaking actors, that the industry would rather teach someone with no Hindi the language from scratch than hire someone like him.

India has had languages of the elite in the past — Sanskrit was one, Persian another. They were needed to unite an entity more linguistically diverse than Europe. But there was perhaps never one that bore such an uneasy relationship to the languages operating beneath it, a relationship the Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock has described as "a scorched-earth policy," as English.

India, if it is to speak to itself, will always need a lingua franca. But English, which re-enacts the colonial relationship, placing certain Indians in a position the British once occupied, does more than that. It has created a linguistic line as unbreachable as the color line once was in the United States.

Two students I met in Varanasi encapsulated India's tortured relationship with English. Both attended Benares Hindu University, which was founded in the early 20th century to unite traditional Indian learning with modern education from the West. Both students were symbols of the failure of this enterprise.

One of them, Vishal Singh, was a popular basketball player, devoted to Michael Jordan and Enfield motorbikes. He was two-thirds of the way through a degree in social sciences — some mixture of psychology, sociology and history. All of his classes were in English, but, over the course of a six-week friendship, I discovered to my horror that he couldn't string together a sentence in the language. He was the first to admit that his education was a sham, but English was power. And if, in three years, he learned no more than a handful of basic sentences in English, he was still in a better position than the other student I came to know.

That student, Sheshamuni Shukla, studied classical grammar in the Sanskrit department. He had spent over a decade mastering rules of grammar set down by the ancient Indian grammarians some 2,000 years before. He spoke pure and beautiful Hindi; in another country, a number of careers might have been open to him. But in India, without English, he was powerless. Despite his grand education, he would be lucky to end up as a teacher or a clerk in a government office. He felt himself a prisoner of language. "Without English, there is no self-confidence," he said.

In my own world — the world of English writing and publishing in India — the language has wrought neuroses of its own. India, over the past three decades, has produced many excellent writers in English, such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy. The problem is that none of these writers can credit India alone for their success; they all came to India via the West, via its publishing deals and prizes.

India, when left to its own devices, throws up a very different kind of writer, a man such as Chetan Bhagat, who, though he writes in English about things that are urgent and important — like life on campuses and in call centers — writes books of such poor literary quality that no one outside India can be expected to read them. India produces a number of such writers, and some justly speculate that perhaps this is the authentic voice of modern India. But this is not the voice of a confident country. It sounds rather like a country whose painful relationship with language has left it voiceless.

The Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky felt in the 19th century that the slavish imitation of European culture had created "a sort of duality in Russian life, consequently a lack of moral unity." The Indian situation is worse; the Russians at least had Russian.

In the past, there were many successful Indian writers who were bi- and trilingual. Rabindranath Tagore, the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote in English and Bengali; Premchand, the short story writer and novelist, wrote in Hindi and Urdu; and Allama Iqbal wrote English prose and Persian and Urdu poetry, with lines like:

The illusion is comfort, stability

In truth every grain of Creation pulsates

The caravan of form never rests

Every instance a fresh manifestation of its glory

You think Life is the mystery; Life is but the rapture of flight.

But around the time of my parents' generation, a break began to occur. Middle-class parents started sending their children in ever greater numbers to convent and private schools, where they lost the deep bilingualism of their parents, and came away with English alone. The Indian languages never recovered. Growing up in Delhi in the 1980s, I spoke Hindi and Urdu, but had to self-consciously relearn them as an adult. Many of my background didn't bother.

This meant that it was not really possible for writers like myself to pursue a serious career in an Indian language. We were forced instead to make a roundabout journey back to India. We could write about our country, but we always had to keep an eye out for what worked in the West. It is a shameful experience; it produces feelings of irrelevance and inauthenticity. V. S. Naipaul called it "the riddle of the two civilizations." He felt it stood in the way of "identity and strength and intellectual growth."

That day almost a year ago in Varanasi, the boatman felt that Mr. Modi's coming to power would rid India of the legacy of English rule. Mr. Modi, who had risen to power out of poverty with little to no English, seemed to pose a direct challenge to the power of the English-speaking elite. The boatman was wrong. Though the election was in some ways a dramatization of India's culture wars, English, and all that it signifies, will endure here for generations still.

This is as deep an entrenchment of class and power as any the world has known; it will take more to change it than a change of government. It will take a dismantling of colonial education, a remaking of the relationship between language and power.The boatman spoke from anger, but I was not out of sympathy with his rage. It was the rage of belonging to a place that, 70 years after the British left, still felt in too many ways like an outpost.

Aatish Taseer is the author of the novels "Noon" and the forthcoming "The Way Things Were."

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

2014年世界文学和比较文学研究大事记

2014年世界文学和比较文学研究大事记

 

□ 金  雯

 

自从"世界文学"在2000年前后成为文学研究界热词之后，本已呈收缩之势的"比较文学"越发陷入明日黄花之忧，斯皮瓦克2005年发出"一个学科的死亡"的宏论，就是为传统意义上的比较文学敲响丧钟，告诉我们以探讨欧洲文学的互相关联为主，希冀构建"普遍文学"以及通用文学发展法则的比较文学难免衰败。文学终将是世界的，以国别和语言的界限将文学分类，但这些边界随时处于变动之中，一边创造秩序，一边颠覆秩序。也正是对世界的重新想象使得21世纪的学者重新回到19世纪确立的概念，如歌德的"世界文学"(Weltliteratur)、狄尔泰的精神史(Geistesgeschichte)，以及马克思、恩格斯对于世界文学概念的沿用。回归不是简单延续，在欧洲文学传统上叠加"边缘"小传统，而是在材料扩张重组的基础上彻底变革思考和书写文学史的方法。

　　不过，比较文学经历了一番危机后，也学会了把重心从揭示普遍规律转移到分析文化对话和互译上来，尤其关注对话不通畅、力量不平衡的现象，对"比较"的内涵和方法不断反思。焕然一新的比较文学也因而能够反过来批评世界文学，认为世界文学还不能脱离19世纪欧洲中心论的影响，往往把欧洲建构为新文学潮流的发源地。目前来看，世界文学和经重新定义的比较文学都是强势显学，经常被学者交替使用，呈现出分庭抗礼的态势。

　　2013年美国出版的新书《反对世界文学》就是比较文学对世界文学的一次示威，[1]作者艾米丽·艾普特在2014年的美国语言协会年会上进行了签售，这本著作针对世界文学研究中出现的建构文学"中心"与"边缘"的倾向——帕斯卡尔·卡萨诺娃的《世界文学共和国》[2]——提出了一些更为尊重弱势文学的研究模型。艾普特在翻译研究领域工作多年，也是普林斯顿大学出版社"翻译和跨国研究"（Translation and Transnation）系列图书的编辑，深知好的世界文学和比较文学研究必须依托尊重差异的翻译方法，所以也参与编辑了《不可译概念汇编》。这本词典从一本法文辞源著作英译而来，历经11年的努力，2014年终于大功告成。[3]它词条翔实精细，追溯了欧洲重要的哲学概念从古希腊语进入德语、法语和英语的过程，着重指出流通中出现的异质不兼容的问题。《不可译概念汇编》和艾普特的专著一样，是近几年比较文学界在世界文学压力下反躬自问以捍卫自身领地的一个缩影。

　　而与这本词典遥相呼应的是上海文艺出版社历经十余年艰辛最终完成的8卷本中文版《世界文学史》。这套丛书由俄语原文翻译过来，特别注重欧美之外的文学传统，与欧洲学者构筑的世界文学史相比更为广博开阔，对世界的想象更为多元、民主。世界文学领域内部有许多分歧和争议，有可以攻击的弱点，但如能组建一流团队缜密地开展集体项目，也能具备一般比较文学无法企及的宏观性。

不论是世界文学还是比较文学，都要面对语言不可穷尽的多样性，以及语言转换和文化交流中不可同化的差异性和话语权利的不平等。这些问题贯穿新近世界文学和比较文学研究的各个层面，也给这个领域注入了绵延不断的活力，世界文学和比较文学在2014年继续保持学界焦点的地位。

 

比较的伦理：自我和他者

比较文学研究中经常谈论的关键问题是如何对待异质语言和文化。有一种比较极端的看法认为不同文化在根本上具有趋同性。柏拉图《会饮篇》中的阿里斯托芬说人之初都是连体双生的形态，后来被宙斯分开才会怅然若失。这个理论搬到语言翻译中来就变成了本雅明在《译者的任务》中提出的观点：不同文字之间有一种特殊的亲缘，"先于并外在于一切历史关联"，不同语言的根本"指向"（intent）最终会显示出其前定的内在关联，而翻译就是将这些内在关联加以揭示的手段。将一个文本所有的翻译收集起来，不同语言之间的指向会逐渐显示出它们的同质性，就像同一个花瓶的碎片，还是可以重新拼接起来。但理想毕竟只是理想，不同语言和文学之间的异质性是文学研究不可忽略的必然，探讨这种异质性也是比较文学研究最大的伦理贡献。早在2002年，斯皮瓦克就发表了《论泰戈尔、库切和一些教学场景中的伦理和政治问题》[4]，论证阅读文学，尤其是双语或者具有世界视野的文学，具有斡旋自我和他者关系的作用。

　　比较文学研究中的伦理问题也出现在《美国现代语言协会会刊》2013年5月号，以专题形式探讨"比较何为"。伦理研究在西方经久不衰，关乎个体与他者的关系以及主体意识的形成，也经常从文学中汲取论证素材。当代学者中最好的例子就是努斯鲍姆在《爱的知识》中对詹姆斯《金碗》的细读，以及《诗性正义》中所分析的狄更斯对穷人的描写（《艰难时世》），文学对于努斯鲍姆提出的道德心理学和伦理学理论而言有着举足轻重的作用。文学研究中也专门产生了"伦理转向"这个说法，认为文学在伦理学中应该占有特殊的地位。"伦理研究"这个概念近几年在国内突然通行起来，倒也不失为一件好事。

    《美国现代语言协会会刊》的特辑邀请近10位比较文学学者进行笔谈。德国学者托马斯·克拉维兹特意从伦理的角度来阐发"比较"的概念。[5]他特别指出了两个极端的思想。一个是亚里士多德在《尼各马可伦理学》中提到的"终极"或"成果"(telos)的概念，即事物的终极目的及其根本动因。这个概念是比较文学和世界文学的天敌，文学史和整个人类史一样，没有终极目标，也没有统一标准，拿任何一个想象的终极尺度来衡量具体文学现象都是伦理大忌。相反的倾向则是列维纳斯在自己的伦理学中描绘的绝对不可知的他者，这个理念会阻止所有比较行为，让我们陷入无法迈出自我的境地。比较文学就是在两个极端中间穿梭的学问。

    也是在2013年，约翰霍普金斯大学出版社继2006年出版《全球化时代的比较文学》之后，又出版了丽塔·菲尔斯基等主编的《比较：理论、方法、用途》。[6]论文集汇集了比较文学界的主要学者，虽然是2013年面世，至今仍回响不断。

当然，伦理研究的局限也是很明显的，往往会促成与历史脱节的"普适性"文学阐释法。比较文学不只是能促使我们厘清自我和他者的关系，更重要的也许是帮助我们理解文类或文学体裁的历史演变以及文学与历史的关系。

文类或文学体裁的历史演变

2014年的中外文类史研究都有进展。在《中国比较文学》2014年第四期中的"中国叙事学"特辑中，领衔学者傅修延在按语中特别指出叙事传统的成因要从多个方向和层面上进行"知识考古学"般的刨根问底。该特辑的文章分别考察了中国明清以来叙事传统的不同成因，包括建筑空间对中国章回小说结构的影响，辞赋传统、谶纬和史传传统在白话叙事文学的延伸。

　　用福柯知识考古学的方法来考察中国汉语叙事传统的流变是浦安迪、杨义、王德威等学者一直尝试回答的一个问题。傅修延提出，要把中西叙事学比较放在"长时段"内进行考量，同时要修正认为中国"缺乏"西方现代叙事艺术中各种特征的传统观点。但作者对中外传统的交融也十分注重，提到了佛教文化对唐宋以来叙事形态的影响，以及从印度舶来的以物为线索的叙事模式等文学史片段。可以说，这个研究思路在一个具体的层面上参与了比较文学的伦理之辩。

　　与此呼应的是朗西埃2014年在美国批评杂志《小说研究》上发表的一篇新作《小说的线索》，对"现代小说"的形成进行了重新解释。[7]2008年的《杀死包法利夫人》一文就已经显示了朗西埃对于叙事形式的准确把握。尽管这篇论文在思维上略有逊色，但对欧洲小说的"现代转向"却提出了更为恢宏的解读。朗西埃开篇即说"现代小说始于悲剧的阵亡"，指出小说情节的构造方式发生了转变。正如歌德对于古希腊尤里庇德斯的悲剧《死而复生的伊菲格尼》的改编后无来者一样，现代小说（大致从福楼拜算起）不再提供因果逻辑明显、指向性和道德诲谕性强的叙事作品。在普鲁斯特和沃尔夫这些现代主义作家的小说中我们看到的则是由感官细节编织起来的"明亮的光晕"（沃尔夫语），与人物在自己意愿指引下发生的行为成为并行的两条线索，或是完全取代后者。

　　朗西埃的观点类似2013年刚从法语翻译到英文里来的《小说史传》，作者是罗马尼亚出生，现任芝加哥大学比较文学教授的汤姆·帕维尔。[8]这本书2003年在法国以法语出版，2013年翻译成英文，对英语现代小说史及其古典和中世纪渊源做出了独到的梳理，尤其谈到了悲剧性叙事（比如1669年某意大利伯爵所著的《葡萄牙修女的书信》）和田园、宫廷爱情叙事在现代小说中有所传承也有所颠覆的现象。

朗西埃在《杀死包法利夫人》和《小说的线索》中都勾勒了一个悖论：现代小说对于文体和细节铺陈的重视，似乎对于"社会法则"不再理会，但从更深层次来说，也是对社会法则的全面渗透——也就是说法则和生活本身融为一体——而显得无法勾勒的一种无意识映照。朗西埃对小说与历史的理解无法超越最一流的文学批评家，但他的思路与他们是共通的，现代小说用自己非历史的视角和历史进行对话，这是评论现代小说的主要路径。与往年一样，2014年也不乏新历史主义的小说研究，2014年年初的美国现代语言协会年会就有一个"新小说理论"的发言组，南希·阿姆斯特、苏珊·斯坦福·弗里德曼等著名小说史研究专家重新审视了现代小说兴起的历史，纷纷表示要注重文类演变成因的多样性，也就是所谓"历史背景"的多元性，这与中国学者傅修延在"中国叙事学"特辑中表示的观点形成了一种隔空回应。

世界小说史与世界历史

在《美国现代语言协会会刊》"比较何为"的特辑上还有一篇引人注目的翻译作品。这是俄国形式主义理论学派奠基人维谢洛夫斯基（A.Veselovsky，1838—1906）1863年的一篇文章《国外研究报告》的节选英译。在这篇绝妙的文章里，维谢洛夫斯基做了一种笔记式探讨，询问为什么德国学界有世界历史和普遍语义学，却没有"世界文学"(俄文原文更准确地说是普遍文学，而"普遍文学"也是19世纪到现在欧洲一直沿用的概念，表示研究不同文学传统的意义在于揭示普遍的文学生成法则)。德国的国别文学已经非常发达，但世界文学却无法稳固地创立起来，维谢洛夫斯基认为一个重要原因是当时欧洲对于文学史的理解还局限于文本内容，比较狭隘。第二个原因是文学传统的冲突碰撞没有既定规律可循，也就是说研究世界范围内的文学无法形成"科学"，或许永远无法取得科学的地位。

　　维谢洛夫斯基的论证说明他对"普遍文学"的理解不仅涵盖了西欧传统中对于普遍适用的文学法则的探索，同时也提出了我们今天很熟悉的以研究交融和分裂为主的翻译研究方法。同时，这也说明普遍文学、比较文学还有世界文学，都有一种对"法则"的向往，这在上面谈到的形式研究中也有所体现，然而这种向往总是被历史本身的断裂和琐细所挫败。

　　维谢洛夫斯基对文学形式发展法则的理解与社会、政治和文化史紧密相连，也因此提出了一个广义文学史的概念，和今天我们所理解的新历史主义——也就是把文学放在文化史的背景中来理解——十分吻合，正如他所说"文学的历史就是文化的历史"。比如，要理解中世纪普罗旺斯诗歌，就不能只单纯了解诗歌本身以及行吟诗人的生平，还需要明白骑士道德准则、古堡日常生活、中世纪女性困境，以及重要历史事件，例如十字军东征。同时，特定诗人的诗歌也必须和他创作的非诗歌文本相联系。维谢洛夫斯基同时也指出，19世纪上半叶欧洲最优秀的文学史作者,譬如兰克，都是以政治史研究著称的，这也就是说立志写好文学史的学者一定也要是文化史、日常经验史的专家。

　　维谢洛夫斯基的这番话，我们至今也并未超越，文学研究界比较通行的新历史主义就是把文学史当成文化史的一部分来研究，融合话语和社会机构及制度的历史。这个方法是文学研究诞生之初的光芒，恐怕也是很难"超越"的永恒归宿。新历史主义在西方文学的研究中传统深厚，除了常见的政治批评，还有从市场的角度、版权沿革的角度、阅读群体变迁的角度来谈重塑文学史的各类著作。

　　不过，在比较文学中运用文化史的视角还是相当困难的，鲜有先例。目前各大学术杂志上比较通行的比较研究的文章还是以形式特点和主题为链接纽带的。能找到的一个例子是亚力克山大·比克罗夫特2010年的著作《古希腊和中国早期的著作人观念和文化身份：谈文学流通的规律》[9]，作者比较的是古希腊荷马诗篇和先秦的《诗经》，着眼于它们如何跨越城邦和地域界限，成为"世界"文学的历史。他老话新说，提出了一个"潜在诗学"的概念，表明研究文学是以文学为楔子，关键是研究文学和世界的关系。

　　国内学界也可以找到一些类似的例子。北大张丽华的《现代中国〈短篇小说〉的兴起》就把文类历史的研究和印刷文化以及教育制度变化结合起来，并同时追溯域外文类观念对清末和五四时期中国作家和译者的影响，具备了比较文化史的雏形。同在北大的另一位学者郝田虎在他的新作《缪斯的花园》中也提到了以早期现代英国札记书为切入点。郝田虎在这本著作中探究的是17世纪书籍史的两大问题，一个是作者权利意识状况和早期现代"写作"的含义，一个是英国"文学经典"的形成；同时也在书中指出了未来与中国类书和札记笔记书比较的前景。

　　用历史主义的眼光进行比较文学和世界文学的研究还产生了另一种可能，那就是从世界体系理论中汲取养分，在宏观的层面上构筑某一种文类或体裁的世界史。这里必须提一下莫莱蒂，他2014年不仅出版了新作《资产阶级：文学与历史之间》，又一举以论文集《远距离阅读》拿下美国国家批评人圈的批评作品奖。[10]他在2000年发表的《世界文学推论》一文具有开创性意义，提出要摸索"文学史法则"，推测某一种居于领先地位的小说体裁，大致可以保持多长时间。同时期开始用统计手段和图像技术来实现研究文学的"大数据"，揭示普遍法则的意向，并在2005年出版的《图表、地图、树形图》一书中展示了初步成果。2010年，莫莱蒂又创立了斯坦福文学实验室，奠定了自己作为"算法批评"（Computational Criticism）的鼻祖地位，2014年的获奖也说明文学研究的量化手段受到了普通知识界的肯定。

　　比较文学和世界文学并驾齐驱，对文学研究者整体能力的考验是严峻的。如何书写不失之偏颇的比较文学史，并和印刷文化、文化机制和阅读群体流变等文化史问题结合起来，还有待于未来学者用研究实践来做出回答。但不论是钻研不可译的洞烛幽微，还是整合归总世界文学之功，都不是一人之力所能胜任，需要许多学者联手才有成功的可能。因此，人尽其才、协同互助恐怕是当代文学研究必须遵循的范式和最高伦理法则。最好的文学作品其意味是难以穷尽的，它们总是常读常新，也因此让人感到，在这个时代，身为文学研究者，何其幸运。

 

注释

[1]Epter, Emily. Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslability. Verso, 2013.

[2]Casanova, Pascale, DeBevoise, M.B.Trans. World Republic of Letters. Harvard University Press, 2007.

[3]Emily Epter et al. ed. The Dictionary of Untranslatables. Princeton University Press, 2014. Barbara Cassin dir. Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles. Le Seuil/Le Robert, 2004.

[4]Spivak, Gayatri."Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Some Scenes of Teaching." Diacritics 32.3—4 (2002), 17—31.

[5]Thomas Claviez. "Done and Over With—Finally? Otherness, Metonymy, and the Ethics of Comparison."  PMLA 128.3 (2013), 608—614.

[6]Saussy, Haun, ed. Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Felski, Rita et al. ed. Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

[7]Ranciere, Jacques, "The Thread of the Novel." Novel.47.2 (2014):196—209.

[8]Pavel, Thomas G. The Lives of the Novel: A History. Princeton University Press, 2013.

[9]Beecroft, Alexander. Authorship and Cultural Identity in Early Greece and China: Patterns of Literary Circulation. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

[10]Moretti, Franco. The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature. Verso, 2014; Distant Reading. Verso, 2013; "Conjectures on World Literature." New Left Review, 2007; Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary Studies. Verso, 2007.

 

作者单位：复旦大学外文学院

（责任编辑陈琰娇）

 

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

So Many Smells, So Little Time: In Defense of "Stinky" Academic Writing

Posted on September 29, 2014

Steven Pinker recently offered a lengthy explanation of "Why Academics Stink At Writing."  First, it is important to note that the title of Pinker's post is misleading.  Indeed, as he points out early on, he is actually arguing about why academic writing is "turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand?"  This is different than why academics stink at writing—and, indeed, the claim that "academics stink at writing" is an example of stinky writing, unless one likes sweeping, pejorative generalizations.

Pinker writes that "the most popular answer outside the academy is the cynical one: Bad writing is a deliberate choice."  I'm inside the academy, and I want to offer a non-cynical "deliberate choice" explanation for why academic writing is dense and obscure.

Pinker gets close to my explanation later on the post.[1]  Specifically, Pinker attributes dense and obscure academic writing to "the writer's chief, if unstated, concern … to escape being convicted of philosophical naïveté about his own enterprise."

The dense and obscure nature of much scholarly writing, of which I am frequent producer, is at least partly the result of the author's need to convince the reader that the author knows what the hell he or she is talking about.

Qualifications (or "hedges," in Pinker's terminology) such as "almost," "apparently," "comparatively," "relatively," and so forth are not necessarily "wads of fluff that imply they are not willing to stand behind what they say."

Rather, they ironically can serve as a way to make scholarly arguments more succinct while indicating thought by the author on the matter being described.  For example, suppose that I'm describing how members of Congress tend to vote.  I could say that "voting in Congress these days is partisan."  Is that true?  Well, not exactly.  Is it pretty close to true?  Yes, in the sense that voting in Congress is highly correlated with partisanship: Members of either party tend to vote like their fellow partisans, and this correlation is stronger today than in much of American history.  But it's not true that members always vote with their party's leadership.  Thus, a more accurate statement—and one that reveals that one is thinking about the data more carefully—is as follows:

Voting in Congress these days is largely partisan.

Pinker describes a lot of words as "hedging," and they're not all the same.  Continuing the Congressional voting example, one might wonder why Members vote as they do.  Even if one thinks that the reader doesn't need a qualifier like "largely," the statement "Voting in Congress these days is partisan" is still unclear. For example, is the author claiming that Members of Congress vote as they do because of their partisanship?  That is, do Members of Congress simply follow their party's directions when voting? This is an open question, it turns out.  Accordingly, a more accurate statement is

Voting in Congress these days is at least seemingly partisan.

Yes, that sentence is hedging.  For a reason—one conclusion a reader might draw from "Voting in Congress these days is partisan" is unwarranted.  Including the "at least seemingly" qualifier is not a wad of fluff to signal that I'm not willing to stand behind what I say—it's a key part of what I want you to hear me saying.

I could go on, but I'll conclude with the "math of politics" of this phenomenon.  Academic writing (and here I am thinking of writing intended to be subjected to peer-review of some form) is dense and obscure because the written presentation of the research is necessarily an incomplete rendition of the research itself.  That is, peer review is about trying to verify the qualities of the argument, which often requires inferring about the processes of the research that are by necessity incompletely conveyed in the written work.  Dense and obscure writing—jargon, qualifiers, etc.—are a bigger manifestation of the typographical convention "[sic.]"  When quoting a passage with an error, such as a misspelling or grammatical mistake, it is common practice to place "[sic.]" immediately after the mistake(s).  This is done because the author needs to signal to the editors, reviewers, and readers, that this mistake is not the author's fault.  Importantly, though, it illustrates more than just that—[sic.] also signals that the author noticed the mistake.

Academic writing has to be dense and obscure, i.e., tough to parse, precisely because most scholars study phenomena that are tough to parse.  To continue Pinker's theme, then, one might say that scholarly writing "stinks" because the real world "has so many smells." Ironically, academic writing is difficult to read because it is attempting to portray what is almost always a big and variegated reality: often, the appealing parsimony of a conversational style is insufficient to accurately convey the knowledge and findings of the author.

In conclusion, academic writing is a very complicated signaling game—and I don't mean "game" in a derogatory sense—that is necessitated by the various constraints we all labor under: time, resources, page limits, and exhaustion in both mental and physical forms. Dense and obscure language is more costly and complicated than conversational language, but this costly complication is a requisite outcome of the screening process that scholarly work is rightly subjected to.

 

---

 

[1] I couldn't quite figure out how to put this in the body of this post, but the point at which Pinker turns to this argument occurs in an ironic paragraph:

In a brilliant little book called Clear and Simple as the Truth, the literary scholars Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner argue that every style of writing can be understood as a model of the communication scenario that an author simulates in lieu of the real-time give-and-take of a conversation. They distinguish, in particular, romantic, oracular, prophetic, practical, and plain styles, each defined by how the writer imagines himself to be related to the reader, and what the writer is trying to accomplish. (To avoid the awkwardness of strings of he or she, I borrow a convention from linguistics and will refer to a male generic writer and a female generic reader.) Among those styles is one they single out as an aspiration for writers of expository prose. They call it classic style, and they credit its invention to 17th-century French essayists such as Descartes and La Rochefoucauld.

To be clear, it took me a couple of reads to comprehend that paragraph.  A conversational style is Pinker's ideal for clarity—so why include the parenthetical explanation his gendered pronouns?

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Review by James Housefield

2015-03-17 08:02:00 　　来自: yi (why can't we be iconophile?)
Toward a Geography of Art的评论    5

　　大半夜迅速把这篇jstor上的书评逐字敲下来，因为这本堪称"博大精深"的书实在太inspiring了！！个人觉得是任何去国外读艺术史的学子都该参考的书，不为了别的，为了知道自己所站的位置究竟是哪里。
　　
　　顺带给一个作者的页面，普林斯顿大学元老级的教授，目前专攻艺术史全球化的问题：http://artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/people/faculty/thomas-dacosta-kaufmann
　　
　　
　　Review by: James Housefield
　　Geographical Review
　　Vol. 94, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 119-122
　　http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033958
　　
　　
　　The time is ripe for studies of the connections between art and geography. Geographers and art historians share an assortment of research methods, especially used for contemporary and historical analysis of material culture and visual imagery. Art historians and geographers often find it essential to understand the site-specific nature or the broader geographical diffusion of physical, social, and intellectual dimensions of culture.
　　
　　Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, an art historian, outlines the beginnings of a history of this potent realm of exchange between art and geography. In doing so, he sets out an essential historiography of the idea of a "geography of art" and puts it into practice with case studies selected from Europe, the Americas, and Japan. His apparently unassuming title recalls Le Corbusier's powerful manifesto Vers une Architecture (translated as Towards a New Architecture [1965]). Kaufmann's book, like Corbusier's, reveals possible steps along pathways whose pursuit may transform further ways of seeing. From cover to cover of this book, such paths are given specific form. A View of Vienna From the Belvedere by Bernardo Bellotto decorates the dust jacket; this painting of 1758-1760 marks physical paths through a Viennese garden while signalling the book's broader intellectual, chronological, and geographical range. Like Canaletto, his uncle and teacher, Bellotto hailed from Venice and achieved international renown as a painter of views. From his vantage point within the upper Belvedere Palace, Bellotto depicted the imperial gardens and the surrounding architecture and landscape of Vienna. In the process, he painted the gardens and buildings that reveal human transformation of the land while subtly transforming it, with the eye of an artist, by condensing the space of the city to fit Vienna's architectural heritage within the space of his canvas. This one image encapsulates many aspects of geography; it speaks of the diffusion of an Italian artistic transition into a new location and to the practice of shaping the earth with buildings designed to give beautiful views (the Belvedere) of the landscape itself. Kaufmann passes over these aspects of the interconnectedness of art and geography as he evaluates larger questions of cultural diffusion and the problem of artistic metropolises with special consideration of theories of center and periphery. As the classically influent architectural style of the Holy Roman Empire was adopted in the Central European capitals of Warsaw and Vienna, he argues, it transferred these and other cities. "The cultural model of the capital considerably determined, directly and indirectly, the nature of the artistic output throughout the imperial realms" (p.181). Belloto's passage from Italy to the courts of Dresden, Vienna, and Warsaw in search of patronage offers an alternative trajectory of the encounter with different stages of imperial growth and urban transformation of the landscape that parallels Kaufmann's analysis.
　　
　　Kaufmann's consideration of center and periphery, of transformation through diffusion, and especially of the historiography of the concept of Kunstgeographie (geography of art) reveal tremendous historical and geographical breadth. Toward a Geography of Art merits the attention of current and future generations of scholars. Its primary audiences will be theses geographers interested in art, those seeking to expand the methods of cultural geogrpahy, and theses interested in seeking out a well-established but little discussed literature. This book should be considered as a resource to be used by advanced courses in the methods and theories of geographical research. Although it engages the language and literature of art history, expansive endnotes effectively introduce geographers to a useful bibliography while clarifying elements that an art historian might take for granted. The only significant negative criticisms that this reviewer will offer are editorial concerns: This book would have been even more effective and engaging had the note appeared as footnotes, in wide margins, to be annotated by the eager reader and fleshed out with a full bibliography. Instead, the endnotes fill nearly one-fifth of the book, and the inquisitive reader must follow them from the beginning in order to make sense of some references because there is no bibliography.
　　
　　Geographers will find familiar names in the bibliography that balance those borrowed from other disciplines. At the core of the book is an intellectual history shared by geographers and art historians that is frequently traceable to German origins (or nomenclature, at least). Carl Sauer is here, with his Berkeley incarnation of Kulturlandschaft (cultural landscape). An emphasis on these German intellectual origins is no surprise, given their importance to the historiography of both geography and art history. In addition, Kaufmann's initial expertise emphasised the arts of central Europe during the Renaissance. Yet his emphasis on German traditions facilitates concise and repeated referenced to the negative impact of racialist theories and environmental determinism on the tradition of Kunstgeographie. "In 1955 Dagobert Frey noted that scholarly interest in the geography of art had declined. Although Frey himself never knew why, it would initially seem that the notorious consequences of nationalist and racialist thinking, coupled with the personal engagement of Frey and certain other scholars in the promotion of Nazi ideology and even in war crimes, may have led to a reluctance to stress national questions in artistic geography…. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to state that the geography of art had been discredited" (p.89). Kaufmann knows his subject well enough to examine the arguments and politics of someone like Frey without falling into their oversimplifications about the relationships between art and geography.
　　
　　Kaufmann's historiography is broad and deep, and it includes the tradition of géographie humaine that emerged from the work and followers of Paul Vidal de la Blache. He has read Clarence Glacken's magisterial Traces on the Rhodian Shore (1976) and applied it in a book that resembles Glacken's project in its breadth and in its sensitivity to the original meanings of humanism. Too few historians of art know Glacken's work. How many geographers know the writings of Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, Julius von Schlosser, Erwin Panofsky, or Henri Focillon? Although these names pass by quickly, Kaufmann gives readers a place to being their investigations of the importance of these figures in constructing histories (and geographies) of art. He devotes a full chapter to the legacy of George Kubler, an expert in the art and architecture of Spain, Portugal, and the pre-Columbian and colonial Americas. He examines the work of Kubler as that of a "geographer of art," who "clearly articulates what he thought the geography of art might be" (p. 221). Kubler's definition of a geography of art appears to over lap many definitions of cultural geography.
　　
　　As his case studies put into practice his theory of a geography of art, Kaufmann opens new doors for cultural geography and for potential exchanges between geography and the visual arts. His approach is rigorous, but not dogmatic: "Geographical considerations of art do not necessarily have to produce general laws or principles…. Rather than striving for general laws, they can attend to individual cases. From these cases they can suggest some of the sorts of geographical conditions and relations that affect works of art. Attention to individual cases also may help to provide answers to the problem of the relation to the historical and the transhistorical, of change in relation to individual objects and the places where they originate and circulate" (p. 351). In his penultimate chapter Kaufmann gives an excellent example of how this attention to individual cases might expand outward to a larger world. There he describes the Japanese practices surrounding the ceremony of e-fumi (trampling on religious images) that incorporates artworks known as fumi-e. In these, a convergence of centre and periphery, of East and West, and of the sacred and the profane resulted in a fascinating set of rituals and artowkrs. E-fumi, acts of deliberate cultural rejection, signal the limited of theories of cultural diffusion. These examples, and the history that Kaufmann has assembled here, call for close attention to detail, for considerations of exceptions, and for a focus on individual cases as new generations of scholars pursue the geographies of art.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.