[PEN-L:2488] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest

[Colin Danby <danbyc@xxxxxxx>]

Professor Dannin:

> ... In my opinion, anyone who writes this sort of prose cannot call
themselves
> revolutionaries, and I have real trouble with their calling themselves

> Marxists. They write not for workers but for other privileged
academics, ...

Read a page or two from any of the more theoretical
chapters of _Capital_, with its highly abstract terms
and sprinklings of Latin, and ask yourself what
audience its author had in mind.

Anyone who has taken the trouble to read _Capital_
finds that it takes time and work because Marx had to
develop a new set of concepts and a new language to
describe them with.  As Doug notes, we accept that
Kant and Hegel also wrote in difficult ways, and
needed to.  We accept that it takes time, work, study
to understand them.  Yet that right to be difficult,
the right to write complex and innovative *theory,* is
suddenly withdrawn for Judith Butler.

Best, Colin