Cultural Memory in the Present

Academic Writing in the Public Arena

By: Jonathan Culler, Kevin Lamb

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Paperback | 8 July 2003

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240 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 1.4

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Is academic writing, particularly in the disciplines of literary theory and cultural studies, needlessly obscure? The claim has been widely circulated in the media and subject to passionate debate, but it has not been the subject of serious discussion. "Just Being Difficult?" provides learned and thoughtful analyses of the claim, of those it targets, and of the entire question of how critical writing relates to its intended publics and to audiences beyond them. In this book, a range of distinguished scholars, including some who have been charged with willful obscurity, argue for the interest and importance of some of the procedures that critics have preferred to charge with obscurity rather than confront in another way. The debate on difficult writing hovers on the edges of all academic writing that seeks to play a role in the public arena. This collection is a much-needed contribution to the discussion.

Industry Reviews

"This collection is a remarkable and rational contribution to a passionate contemporary debate. Is academic writing unjustifiably obscure? The claim has been widely made in media ranging from the Wall Street Journal to The New Republic and Philosophy and Literature. Just Being Difficult? offers a thoughtful, generally unpolemical, stimulating, and learned series of analyses of the claim, of those its targets, and of the entire question of how critical writing relates to its intended public and the audiences beyond it." - Richard Terdiman,University of California, Santa Cruz

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Introduction: Dressing Up, Dressing Down	p. 1
Difficult Style and "Illustrious" Vernaculars: A Historical Perspective	p. 15
Hume's Learned and Conversable Worlds	p. 29
Bad Writing and Good Philosophy	p. 43
The Metaphysics of Clarity and the Freedom of Meaning	p. 58
Feminism's Broken English	p. 75
The Resistance of Theory; or, The Worth of Agony	p. 95
Styles of Intellectual Publics	p. 106
On Difficulty, the Avant-Garde, and Critical Moribundity	p. 129
Difficulty in Modern Poetry and Aesthetics	p. 139
Bad Writing	p. 157
The Morality of Form; or, What's "Bad" about "Bad Writing"?	p. 171
The Politics of the Production of Knowledge: An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak	p. 181
Values of Difficulty	p. 199
Contributors	p. 217
Index	p. 221
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Cultural Memory in the Present

Academic Writing in the Public Arena

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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