three words, or, scholarly peeves
Music: Kate Bush: Aerial (2005)
Today I am trying to "clear the desk" so that I might finally get back to my own scholarship. My coauthor in Arkansas is anxious to get some revisions on an essay finished, I'm sitting on yet another revision and resubmission, and I've got half an essay written on the topic of love. All of this needs to be done before I begin teaching summer school.
Clearing the desk means "blind reviewing" a couple of essays that landed in my lap on Friday, as well as reading a thesis. I have no doubts about the thesis (it will be good), but sometimes reviewing essays can be real agony because people are bad writers. And this comment from someone who struggles with my own writing! Let me explain.
Some readers know that my work is largely in the domain of "theory" (although I consider what I do critical), and more specifically, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and so on. I do try to keep abreast of the reading habits among luminaries in the field because it keeps me "in the conversation." For example, knowing what Barb Biesecker, Ron Greene, and Diane Davis are teaching and reading has become a very reliable measure for whatever theory is pushing up criticism these days. Nevertheless, I say "I do theory" in order to explain why I get the manuscripts to review that I do: much of what I'm asked to review is theory-dense. What sometimes baffles me is the very bad writing of otherwise very bright people. Why are bad writers attracted to complex theory? Theory is often very hard to read, but it is often very precise. What I'm asked to review lately (namely this semester) is also hard to read, but imprecise.
The longer I do this professor thing, the more I am coming into contact with bad writers attracted to difficult thought. I'm not sure to make of it except to say to any potential grad students out there that if you're going to work with difficult French philosophers, please for the love of Deity work on your subject/verb agreements!
This said, my peeve for the day is not bad writing. Rather, it's the remarks of blind reviewers, and I say this in solidarity with all the authors out there who have suffered from similar prose:
As I work on my reviews today, I have banished the word N-U-A-N-C-E-D from my vocabulary. Countless reviews of my work have called for a "more nuanced explanation" or a "nuanced account." Of course, this groom has a bride: "subtle." "Your essay, while admirably clear, could use a more subtle approach to X" is another related charge from blind reviewers. I am starting to think that "subtle" and "nuanced" simply means "you do not read like me." Asking authors to compose a more "nuanced" argument is basically "re-write your essay like I would do."
Now, according to my American Heritage dictionary, nuanced means "a subtle difference in our shade of meaning, expression, or sound." Subtle means "so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe." It seems (or sounds) to me like asking someone to be more "subtle" or "nuanced" is asking them to write more difficult prose. I mean, the point of a critical/rhetorical analysis is not to produce an analysis that cannot be duplicated, but to bring out the otherwise difficult to describe or the previously hidden shades of meaning and what not---a task that is precisely the opposite of being nuanced or subtle. Banishing subtly is the point of criticism, in some ways.
And while I'm at it, let me add a third term peeve: "rigor." I'm tired of reading how I'm not as "rigorous" of the next guy, whatever that means. It sounds like another word for the quality of a good, erect penis. I will never tell an author to be more rigorous. I might tell them to read more deeply, or to lick the text with passion, but . . . .
I'm not about to ask an author to be more phallic or nuanced or subtle. I wish people wouldn't keep asking me to do the same in my writing, either. "Nuance" and "subtle" are the conceits of people who don't understand the working class; "rigor" is the word of people who don't have the patience for foreplay.