Old Email Archive

digest 1998-02-04 #001


11:28 PM 2/3/98 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 3 Feb 1998 05:21:55 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Bad Writing Contest
Clyde McConnell wrote:
> RE: Bad Writing Contest
>
> According to Joseph Deumer:
>
> (a) being a poet + (b) caring deeply about language = ability to
> smell low politics even when it is disguised as a form of
> high-minded humor....
>
> Are these _necessary_ or _sufficient_ conditions, or necessary
> and sufficient?
>
> C. S. McConnell
> Department of Art
> University of Calgary
> Calgary, Alberta
> 
Not necessary, certainly, but clearly sufficient, since anyone with an
ounce of good will and a gram of rhetorical insight can see Wayne
Miller's contest for the tawdry little project it is.
=======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699-5750
315-262-2466
Fax: 315-268-3983
duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
=======================
"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric,
but out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."
--Yeats
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Date: 3 Feb 1998 06:37:38 -0800
From: richard nash 
Subject: Re: FWD: Bad Writing Contest!
Joseph, et al.--
I very much agree with all those who recognize that the bad writing
contest is indeed conducted in bad faith, with a strong Gross and
Levitt
anti-humanist agenda that it does not openly disclose.
BUT, Wayne Miller is not to be targeted here, since he is just
performing
his duty in distributing to the list the message that _Philosophy and
Literature_ asked him to distribute to the list.
For what it's worth, I have resigned myself to the fact that
_Philosophy
and Literature_ will target constructivist arguments in science studies
to
pillory as examples of "bad writing."  There's nothing one can
do about
it, except hope that they actually choose bad writing; even among those
whose arguments I agree with, I sometimes find myself cringing at
stylistic infelicities.  If only I had greater faith in the ear of the
judges.
But as a technical question, do you think Norm Levitt's more
mean-spirited, irascible, tendentious and vitriolic e-mail postings
would
be considered eligible? [insert electronic smiley-face here]
Richard
On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Joseph Duemer wrote:
> The problem is that Wayne Miller uses one aesthetic frame of
reference
> to judge work produced in another, and does so without attempting
to
> understand the poetics of his targets. The undertaking is
intellectually
> dishonest, and his competition is a conservative attack on textual
> practices meant to disrupt the ordinary workings of custom,
prejudice,
> and power. Not that there isn't some turgid theoretical writing,
there
> is. But had I the time and patience tonight I could produce for
you
> sentences from Locke or Hume every bit as "bad" as those
identified by
> Miller's competition. I'm a poet and I care deeply about language,
which
> means I can smell low politics even when it is disguised as a form
of
> high-minded humor. You want really comic treatment of pomposity?
Try
> reading Alan Ginsberg, or listen to him sing his late songs. If
this be
> considered an "inflammatory riposte," that's fine with
me.
>
> =======================
> Joseph Duemer
> School of Liberal Arts
> Clarkson University
> Potsdam NY 13699-5750
> 315-262-2466
> Fax: 315-268-3983
> duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
> http://web.northnet.org/duemer
> =======================
> "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric,
> but out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."
>             --Yeats
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Feb 1998 07:06:15 -0800
From: Matt Kirschenbaum 
Subject: Re: Bad Writing Contest
> anyone with an
> ounce of good will and a gram of rhetorical insight can see Wayne
> Miller's contest for the tawdry little project it is.
>
> =======================
> Joseph Duemer
Joseph, it ain't Wayne Miller's contest, though he did forward
the announcement. It's sponsored by the editors of Philosophy
and Literature, a well-known professional journal published by
a major university press (Johns Hopkins, who also happen to
publish the SLS's Configurations). Seems to me that kind of
backing makes the whole undertaking a good deal more tawdry
than if there were just a single individual behind it. Matt
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Feb 1998 07:16:13 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: FWD: Bad Writing Contest!
My apologies to Wayne Miller--I should have known better--reading too
fast, I guess. My disdain is properly directed at the editiors of
_Philosophy & Literature_.
=======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699-5750
315-262-2466
Fax: 315-268-3983
duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
=======================
"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric,
but out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."
--Yeats
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Feb 1998 12:04:19 -0800
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: Re: Bad Writing Contest
Hi,
I feel I must say something about the origins of the Bad Writing
posting. 1) As
some of you pointed out, I did not invent this contest. Thanks for doing
so. 2)
I must confess that I was not personally asked to forward the
announcement, but
did so freely. 3) My forwarding the contest announcement was actually
intended
to spark a discussion. I hope that we can raise the discursive bar a
little, so
that others who feel like doing so can more freely add their own
opinions of
this "tawdry project." Or perhaps there is a certain weariness
on the topic of
postmodern discourses?
That said, I will add my opinion. Tawdry project or no, different
aesthetic
frames or no, previous bad-writing "winners" I have seen
remind me that, for all
postmodern discourses have aided in new forms of cultural criticism, too
much
writing in these discursive veins has become conventionalized -- that,
in other
words, there is a point at which any style becomes a parody of itself.
This fact
does not invalidate the style. But it should challenge the practitioners
to
reexamine their operating principles.
Wayne
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