Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 17:15:47 -0500
From: "Tony Brown" <tcb1-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: H. Bhabha's "bad" writing


Dear fellow list-members:

Several years ago when I began my Master's thesis, my supervisor handed me a
print-out of an e-mail he had recieved. My supervisor knew I was "into"
theory and gave me this e-mail as a bit of a joke: the e-mail contained the
results of that years Bad Writing Contest. Maybe the contest has grown in
popularity and changed over the years, but I had the distinct impression at
the time that it was simply a mock contest run by a couple of dusty Oxbridge
"old boys" who were a bit upity about the rise of theory in the humanities.
I am actually from New Zealand and am only too well aware of the stringent
resistence to theory in many of the county's humanities departments. I
thought that at most the Bad Writing Contest was a manifestation of this
resistence with New Zealand, and had no idea it would be taken at all
seriously overseas. So I wonder how seriously we, on this list, should take
it. As part of the wider movement of resistence to theory in the humanities
the Bad Writing Contest possibly merits some attention, but I am not sure
how closely this connects with this list's avowedly "postcolonial" focus. 

Anyway, on the issue of the complexity of Bhabha's prose, we might do well
to consider an interview Bhabha gave with T. W. Mitchell published in
_Artforum_ a few years ago. The Interview was entitled "Translator
Translated", and in it Bhabha addresses the issue of the complexity of his
writing and admits that it can be impenetrable at points; says that he tried
to fix the various essays up that were republished in _The Location of
Culture_, and cites as an example a passage from "Articulating the Archaic";
then suggests that part of the potential obscurity of his writing emerges
from the fact that he is at times writing on the verge of what he himself
can comprehend. This at least is what I remember him to have said. Maybe
others recall more clearly or have the interview on hand.

Tony

__________
Tony Brown
Department of English
The State University of New York at Buffalo
Clemens Hall Rm. 306
Buffalo, NY 14260
U. S. A.



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