Tuesday, August 22, 2006

should writing be deceptively simple?

Recently I encountered a set of admonishments to better writing. Partly my presentation here has elements of a debunking exercise, but actually, I do also want to take this list seriously too. Anyway, debunking is itself an activity that is interestingly problematic. So I do want to take all this seriously enough to wonder which of these admonishments to take to heart, which ones to respond to in some form, I'm not sure what, which ones to dismiss as improper. I want to ask others to help to analyze them together with or maybe apart from the points Warner makes (previous post).

So, here are the instructions recreated as a list of ideological assumptions, for examination, possibly analysis, maybe debunking, or even embrace:

1. To be complex and interesting, writing actually needs to be clear and deceptively simple.
2. The laying out of concepts needs to be done only once. The vocabularies need to be set only once.
3. Do what you set out.
4. Quit delaying and displacing.
5. Get yourself out of there.
6. Be felt instead of seen.
7. Let the writing perform you instead of insisting on your presence by making yourself the subject of the text.
8. If you love your teachers’ work, take it further, don’t waste time telling us what your relation to them or it is.
9. Bring joy in ideas and connections instead of quotes.
10. Demonstrate instead of declaring.
11. Use instead of presenting.
12. Make the terms and concepts mean something by playing them out through analysis of the specimen texts.
13. Make the writing produce the emphasis instead of italics.
14. Quit coining terms.
15. Consider the ideological impasses of taxonomy.
16. Respect your readers.
17. Don’t worry about being a critic or an academic. Capitalist or not, there is still a place for intellectual activity and intervention.

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