MISCmedia for 1/6/00
Obviating Obfuscation

BAD WRITING has seemingly always been with us.

So has bad writing by academics, self-styled "communications" experts, and others who presumably ought to know better.

I've certainly attempted to read a lot of it as part of my cultural-critiquing career. And some of the worst comes from self-styled political leftists--guys 'n' gals who supposedly want to overthrow existing elitist institutions in favor of a sociopolitical regime more responsive to The People.

The teaching-biz trade mag Lingua Franca came out last month with a whole article on the topic of whether bad writing was necessary. It's apparently a big issue in certain ivory-tower circles, according to writer James Miller: "Must one write clearly, as [George] Orwell argued, or are thinkers who are truly radical and subversive compelled to write radically and subversively--or even opaquely, as if through a glass darkly?"

Some campus-leftist obscurantists, of course, aren't really dreaming for a Dictatorship of the Prolateriat but rather, whether they admit it or not, for a Dictatorship of the Intelligentsia--a society in which learned theoriticians will rationally decide what's best for everyone (a sort of cross between Sweden and Singapore). Such ideologues will naturally go for ideological discourse that doesn't make a whiff of sense to outsiders.

Others, according to Miller, actually defend their writing style with anti-authoritarian arguments.

Miller quotes '50s German philosopher Theodor Adorno as proclaiming that "lucidity, objectivity, and concise precision" are merely "ideologies" that have been "invented" by "editors and then writers" for "their own accommodation...." "Concrete and positive suggestions for change merely strengthen [the power of the status quo], either as ways of administering the unadministratable, or by calling down repression from the monstrous totality itself."

In short (just the way Adorno wouldn't want it): Readable writing can't help but reflect standardized, conformist ways of thinking. To imagine a truly radical alternative to the way things are, you've gotta use different thought processes, and use written forms that reflect these processes.

I don't buy it.

You see, there's this little discipline called "technical writing." Maybe you've heard of it. A lot of ladies and gents in this hi-tech age are studying it.

One of the tenets of good tech writing is that some topics are naturally complex--such as PC hardware and software design, operation, and maintenance. But they still can and should be explained as clearly as reasonably possible, without losing necessary detail or treating the reader as an idiot. Certain works of tech writing necessarily require that the reader have a basic familiarity with the topic at hand, and will use certain nouns and verbs not used in everyday discourse, but should still strive to communicate what they're trying to communicate effectively and efficiently.

Political and social theories can be as complex as circuit-board schematics and C++ programming code, if not more. But, as shown in the products of Common Courage Press and Seven Stories Press, among others, these ideas can still be expressed in readable, persuasive ways.

TOMORROW: The one sexual behavior women never do--or do they?

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