From: "Stuart Elden" <Stuart.Elden-AT-clara.co.uk> Subject: Re: Bad Writing? Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 12:24:24 -0000 Quentin, Thanks for this response. I think you're being entirely sensible here, and I guess my response to the Bad Writing mail was perhaps overly polemical. But it does make me annoyed. The implicit assumption of those who judge this is that this thought SHOULD be readily understood. Clearly the proposer of Bhabha didn't know his Foucault: whose fault is that? Is it Bhabha's? Did the reader of Butler understand Althusser, Gramsci and their critique? Should writers have to clarify everything they write about before pushing forward? Why waste valuable words on something that many people will fast forward through to get to the heart of the original thought? How many people read Bhabha or Butler as an introduction? There are plenty of books doing that purpose. But yes, I agree there is an 'occluded middle here'. I've spent a lot of time working on Foucault and Heidegger particularly, and found the going tough at the outset. Now it's still difficult, but the difficulty is of another level. I admit to being a bit of purist, and thinking that there is no substitute for hard work. Heidegger, for example, shouldn't be readily comprehensible. He assumed a great deal of background knowledge in his work: who can blame him. And when he is bastardised to suit the purposes of a wider audience I can't help but feel that something serious is missing. Similarly Foucault. Particularly on the issue of space (one of my key interests), there is a lot of simplifying material that does him no service at all. It's a primary motive of my thesis to force people to realise that using Foucault on space is NOT simple, that it must be attentive to the tensions in his work, his use of Heidegger etc. An American professor friend suggested that I should write a book that showed the Heideggerian roots of Foucault's thought, so that Foucauldians 'need not read any more Heidegger'. I'm not sure that's what I want to do - though he is probably right that there is a market for such a book. Rather, I would like to write a book that shows the Heideggerian roots of Foucault's thought, so that Foucauldians want to go back to Heidegger for enriched understandings, and critical distance from my own take. But, that doesn't mean it needs to be willfully obscure. I hope that my work is comprehensible to those prepared to make a little effort. Best wishes Stuart
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