Judith Butler has spoken

[lionheart]

Damn.

www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

'If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.'

unherd.com/2020/09/the-intellectual-shabbiness-of-judith-butler/

I think this sums it up pretty well

Raddled, certainly it’s true that most disciplines outside of pure science precisely.

Postmodernist theorists don’t even seem to be able to define what they mean by theory clearly and precisely, or what postmodernism is.

Most disciplines use words precisely is what I meant to write!

The other problem I have with Butler, many Foucauldian feminists and many postmodernists is that their bedrocks are Marx, Freud, Hegel and a few other male philosophers/theorists - i.e. Nietzsche. Of these, Marx is the only one who can easily (I think) be applied to women in ways that are not fundamentally sexist and which might be meaningful. My feeling about Foucault is that women were virtually absent in his world. His whole idea of power is bound up in men's experience of sex and an eroticism from which I don't think he wants to escape; he finds power sexy. I read his work in circa 1988 for the first time and found it alienating and terrifying. Having said that, I do think he was right in some aspects, but his work lacked a criticality that bothered me as an undergraduate then and continues to do so today.

Postmodernist theorists don’t even seem to be able to define what they mean by theory clearly and precisely, or what postmodernism is.

I do agree. I just find it frustrating that the founding ideas of postmodernism- scepticism, openness to non-western ideas about history and society have become mutated into incoherent bullshit.

I would like another word for the Butlerian Jihadis.

Yes. Postmodernism entered their groundwater so even though I will complain and moan about it, on some level I am no doubt massively influenced by it in positive ways.

I still blame it for all manner of social ills though, including fake news and conspiracy theories. It became a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.

@Lisz

Hang on, you hit the 'unfollow button' because people are criticising the person you folow? I've worked within social media for 15 years, had many different business accounts etc.. and i swear on my life i've never heard anyone suggest that.

Here you go. You're welcome.

mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Unfollow%20jk%20rowling&src=typed_query

I wonder what she'd have said if the protesters had put the effigy in a blue bra instead.

If she were still using 'trans 'to mean 'transgressing boundaries of performed femininity' then yes, the protesters are indeed commenting on her doing this. But they're not making any assumptions about her having a masculine identity, are they? They're pointing out that this female is not performing 'correctly' - it's a comment on her external behaviour, not her internal beliefs about herself.

Clashing realities indeed.

ErrolTheDragon and raddledoldmisanthropist

Yes, I do think that the fact that the sciences in general deal with material questions means the methodology tends to guard somewhat against gobblygook. In that sense mathematics can be a better comparison with philosophical subjects as it isn't so attached to that kind of experimental or observational element.

Genuinely clever people use specialist language to convery meaning more clearly and precisely. They may pitch to different audiences but someone will know exactly what they mean and how their argument is supported.

I don't know if I totally agree with this. I do think that in humanities subjects like philosophy clear thinking is very important and language is used to that end. However, I'm not sure that the specialist language is always so clear or defined. Philosophers often use language in new or unique ways, and they don't always give a primer for that. Sometimes it's through reading the whole of their works, or watching the back and forth between two thinkers who disagree, that you really start to understand the way they are using language. And it can take years for students to really start to understand what they mean and begin to talk about their ideas intelligently, this is part of why traditionally we haven't expected anything really new or interesting from humanities undergraduates. Their job has been to begin to understand the whole intellectual tradition so they have some background to start to grasp and evaluate new ideas or interpretations or new uses of language.

Don't get me wrong - I think Butler has a few poorly observed truisms contained in her thinking and the rest is empty. The language use contains nothing, and a lot of people suspect that when they read it as we can see. But many people have also read really great thinkers and initially found them equally opaque, using language in odd ways, and it's only after considerable reading and study that they begin to make way in understanding them.

People like Butler depend on people giving them that kind of space. To me the question is, how did these charlatans get into the academy in the first place - why weren't they identified and weeded out along the way by all the people whose job it is to do that?

Somewhat OT, but my scientific pedantry forces me to challenge the notion upthread that electron clouds are abstract models ... they're being imaged nowadays. The predicted is being observed. Something may start as a theoretical abstract model, but at some point it may become a model of reality - and if it doesn't, it probably should be eventually binned like eg the ether.

In that sense mathematics can be a better comparison with philosophical subjects as it isn't so attached to that kind of experimental or observational element.

Mathematics (afaik) depends on rigorous proof. Some branches of philosophy may also rely on similar logic systems, but I don't see that there's any relationship to Butler's type of thing.

why weren't they identified and weeded out along the way by all the people whose job it is to do that?

I'm sure many were. But the problem is once a few are in the system, they are in a position to allow more in, and maintain their presence.

That's what the Grievance Studies hoax was trying to demonstrate - that in theses fields where there's no "hard science", peer review can effectively end up just being a sort of back-scratching exercise where people read the paper, see its form, and go "ah, that's written by one of us" and accept it, knowing that the favour will be returned. A whole little subfield then grows full of a circular citation loop. Pluckrose et al just hopped on board and cited the right papers.

Although even then, there is a limit to how far you can push your luck, as anyone who's read Rachel McKinnon's assessment will know. But most frauds who've got their toe in the door aren't dumb enough to be that bad at their job, or the scam. (McKinnon's so egocentric that McKinnon's papers mainly cite McKinnonself. No, you're not doing it right, Rachel).

@raddledoldmisanthropist

Postmodernist theorists don’t even seem to be able to define what they mean by theory clearly and precisely, or what postmodernism is.

I do agree. I just find it frustrating that the founding ideas of postmodernism- scepticism, openness to non-western ideas about history and society have become mutated into incoherent bullshit.

I would like another word for the Butlerian Jihadis.

Yes, or the kind of re-examining the idea that science stands outside of narrative or has a sort of total objectivity - that has been a really important element of the reaction to the Enlightenment that expands our understanding and IMO is also good for science though some don't think so.

But I tend to see the problems of postmodernism as rooted in the rejection of philosophy as possibly having a metaphysical basis that is in any way accessible, and so all you have is the possibility of examining language. It's all through analytic philosophy and even positivism that doesn't really consider itself as postmodern. My intuition is that is why that school of thought hasn't really managed to answer the problems posed by postmodernism very effectively.

many people have also read really great thinkers and initially found them equally opaque, using language in odd ways, and it's only after considerable reading and study that they begin to make way in understanding them.

True but I think for those ideas to be taken up you have to able to validate your meaning to others. Butler's ideas aren't new- she posited then years ago, yet she's still avoiding precision. Nor are they wildly removed from what went before. They are also supposed to be about very concrete experiences.

I have no issue with her novel application of words like hegemony and rearticulation (and completely accept that I will lack the expertise to fully grasp some concepts)- but she's surrounding those words with gobbledygook to obfuscate the fact that her thinking on them isn't very clear, mimicing the kind of rarified intellect you describe. When her ideas are interogated she avoids discussion and engages in semantic debates or whataboutery.

my scientific pedantry forces me to challenge the notion upthread that electron clouds are abstract models

Abstract in the sense of being divorced from our experience of reality and thus hard to conceptualise. It should be easier to describe Gender to a non-philosopher than it is to describe what an electron cloud is to non-scientist.

@NecessaryScene1

why weren't they identified and weeded out along the way by all the people whose job it is to do that?

I'm sure many were. But the problem is once a few are in the system, they are in a position to allow more in, and maintain their presence.

That's what the Grievance Studies hoax was trying to demonstrate - that in theses fields where there's no "hard science", peer review can effectively end up just being a sort of back-scratching exercise where people read the paper, see its form, and go "ah, that's written by one of us" and accept it, knowing that the favour will be returned. A whole little subfield then grows full of a circular citation loop. Pluckrose et al just hopped on board and cited the right papers.

Although even then, there is a limit to how far you can push your luck, as anyone who's read Rachel McKinnon's assessment will know. But most frauds who've got their toe in the door aren't dumb enough to be that bad at their job, or the scam. (McKinnon's so egocentric that McKinnon's papers mainly cite McKinnonself. No, you're not doing it right, Rachel).

Yes, I do think that's partly what happened. But it's maybe worth considering how. It's something I've heard Paglia speak about at some length and it's quite interesting. Apparently part of it was that a large number of European postmodernists who couldn't get work there after the war came to the US looking for university posts. Paglia said, IIRC, that older professors like Bloom, who knew they were largely frauds, didn't always stand up to them. My sense was that she felt Bloom and others of his generation thought they were a sort of passing fad though to some extent she seemed a bit perplexed by their lack of action. She saw them as a threat for sure.

I think an element is that the various grievance study areas were actively trying to include people with no real background in more traditional areas of study, as a way of making up for previous lack of access, or what was seen as unfairly privileging western elite thought systems. But that left very little basis on which to judge the fitness of those people. You can include a woman into a women's studies department, or a member of a marginalised group into another, but it's not like there is some sort of other paradigm for comparing women thinkers about women, or philosophers of African descent talking about African (or African American) thought.

unherd.com/2020/09/the-intellectual-shabbiness-of-judith-butler/?=frlh

TLDR: wherever you stand on this debate, her arguments are rubbish.

language is a tool and people that actually want to communicate consider their audience and present concepts in a way that can be digested and applied for best understanding

and then there's Judy

I learned a long time ago...

people who believe they are intellectually superior often attempt to signal they are the smartest in the room

confident idiots complicate

and

people that are actually brilliant have no use for signaling superiority and prefer to be the least smart in the room

securely intelligent simplify

Sam Leith's article above is excellent, points out exactly the problems with Butler's arguments. And a good example of someone using fancy language to actually make a more precise and lucid argument, rather than just to (presumably) try and mask a weak one, as Butler appears to do.

I don't mind big words, if they're the right words. I just don't like disingenuous waffle.

I see Leith is the author of Write To The Point: How To Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page

If that does what it says on the tin, maybe he could do the world a favour by sending Butler a copy?

Also the author of 'Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama', I see. Isn't Butler a professor of Rhetoric?

@raddledoldmisanthropist

many people have also read really great thinkers and initially found them equally opaque, using language in odd ways, and it's only after considerable reading and study that they begin to make way in understanding them.

True but I think for those ideas to be taken up you have to able to validate your meaning to others. Butler's ideas aren't new- she posited then years ago, yet she's still avoiding precision. Nor are they wildly removed from what went before. They are also supposed to be about very concrete experiences.

I have no issue with her novel application of words like hegemony and rearticulation (and completely accept that I will lack the expertise to fully grasp some concepts)- but she's surrounding those words with gobbledygook to obfuscate the fact that her thinking on them isn't very clear, mimicing the kind of rarified intellect you describe. When her ideas are interogated she avoids discussion and engages in semantic debates or whataboutery.

my scientific pedantry forces me to challenge the notion upthread that electron clouds are abstract models

Abstract in the sense of being divorced from our experience of reality and thus hard to conceptualise. It should be easier to describe Gender to a non-philosopher than it is to describe what an electron cloud is to non-scientist.

I totally agree this is the case. My point - if I am remembering correctly - was that the reason I suspect people have been taken in is that they have had other experiences of finding academics like Butler difficult to understand. Lots of people find them just impossible even when they do make sense.

I think the Leith piece is correct though, what's really remarkable is behind the weird language, it's all the worst kinds of fallacies and bad argumentation that you find from the average numb-scull down at the pub. Surely a professional thinker should at least make higher quality errors?

On Butler's writing style: When I read Gender Trouble I began to make chapter summaries the way I did for books that would be in tests,,, because her prose was so opaque.

My summaries turned out to be only a few sentences long, so I re-read a couple of chapters, to see what I had missed. But I had not missed anything.

I love language and I love expanding my vocabulary.

However, there is a point where over communication or too many disconnected words renders a concept too opaque and either obscures meaning altogether or contradicts itself or better yet becomes word salad.

I'm not a good writer but I am a good technical writer because I speak to the audience with a focus on attempting to view the subject through the reader's lens. (I write incredibly boring financial and accounting tools.) Because the objective is deep understanding of certain concepts and practical applications - if I am not clear procedures/theories will not be followed leading to enormous financial and accounting mistakes in practice. Being clear is foundational as without that the text is of no use. The writing requires a lot of language that laypeople do not know (because they are tied to functional concepts) but I provide definitions as footnotes for the newly acquainted to hopefully help ensure understanding.

Flexing your vocabulary isn't a bad thing but over flexing destroys any possible flow as well as the message (more often than not). To me language is like music and math - unnecessarily complicating can destroy possibility of clarity turning into noise that which has the potential to convey meaning.

Disclaimer: In life and on MN I am super verbose but when I write for a dependent audience I keep the words as concise as possible.

@Oxyiz

So whenever someone talks nonsense I assume its from a position of insecurity, rather than certainty and knowledge.

Bingo!