Urban v's the Commentariat

[DotCommunist]

well surely there is a difference between language that is jargon laden because of its neccesary specificity and language that is deliberately obfuscational in order to sideline the uninitiated?

for instance listening to a pair of sparkies talk shop would be a bit har to follow but its just trade talk.

 

[el-ahrairah]

everything that needs a theory needs explanatory terms that appear to be jargon. but the jargon should be for the initiated and those seeking a greater understanding of the subject, you don't need jargon to explain marx or feminism to someone who doesn't know what it is, because both rely on an understanding of and empathy for experiences that are commonplace across all human experience. IMO, obv.

 

[frogwoman]

some marxist stuff IS deliberately obfuscational (altho not necessarily to exclude people, but to make the person saying it sound clever) ime

 

[chilango]

some marxist stuff IS deliberately obfuscational (altho not necessarily to exclude people, but to make the person saying it sound clever) ime

I love the irony in your use of the term "obfuscational" in that post.

 

[DotCommunist]

some marxist stuff IS deliberately obfuscational (altho not necessarily to exclude people, but to make the person saying it sound clever) ime

its the passwords to the advanced layer's special canteen.

 

[frogwoman]

we aren't the only ones tho, religions do it as well with stuff like "witnessing" which is completely different to its original meaning

"i witnessed a crime" vs "i witnessed to the message of the gospel" (i knocked on someones door and asked them if they wanted to talk about jesus")

 

[Delroy Booth]

some marxist stuff IS deliberately obfuscational (altho not necessarily to exclude people, but to make the person saying it sound clever) ime

Exactly, obviously there's a need for some specific terminology in any kind of intellectual or political movement but that language then has a social dimension, how you employ that language ends sorting people based on their education, class, cultural capital, all these things. You'd have to be deliberately myopic to not see the same sorts of tendency on the intersectional twitter circuit.

I mean Marxists are terrible for this, it's not just about needing a speficic jargon but it's about demonstrating how Marxism and Socialism is such an incredibly complicated and difficult things that you'd better just leave it to the well educated to deal with and not concern yourself with these topics. It's sad because one of the old slogans was "Theory is a weapon in the hands of the workers" but of course then ends being "theory is a weapon in the hands of the vanguard" and I see a bit of this informal vanguardism taking place amongsta intersectionalista's too.

 

[DotCommunist]

we aren't the only ones tho, religions do it as well with stuff like "witnessing"

evangelica/baptist jargon is well easy to parse though.

he says having grown upin that tradition

but I think religious cant has greater accessibility due to the commonality of its linguistic/thematic structure


*beard stroke*

 

[frogwoman]

when i first joined the sp i found all the talk of "layers" etc really off putting, and then about two years later i started using that terminology myself

 

[Delroy Booth]

we aren't the only ones tho, religions do it as well with stuff like "witnessing"

Isn't this what Fisher was getting at in his Vampire Castle thing? If you can actually discern a proper point out of it by scraping away the terrible analogy and the hip lecturer talk, that's priestly in that it offers redemption through them, through adopting their catechism, only they are the ones who can read the right scriptures they're the ones who can discern god's will, all that is contingent on the language.

Lawyers too. Having their own legalese makes them the conduit through which you access the law. They're the only ones who can translate, you employ their services as translators of the law in order to have access to it - if the law were simple enough for anyone to understand there'd be much less need for lawyers.

 

[Delroy Booth]

when i first joined the sp i found all the talk of "layers" etc really off putting, and then about two years later i started using that terminology myself

Militant had their own language and gestures par excellence though I mean they're a great example.

Astonishing really that the managed to get such a large amount of support for a while in Liverpool when they talked the way they did and used such awful jargon.

 

[butchersapron]

Exactly, obviously there's a need for some specific terminology in any kind of intellectual or political movement but that language then has a social dimension, who you employ that language ends sorting people based on their education, class, cultural capital, all these things. You'd have to be deliberately myopic to not see the same sorts of tendency on the intersectional twitter circuit.

I mean Marxists are terrible for this, it's not just about needing a speficic but it's about demonstrating how Marxism and Socialism is such an incredibly complicated and difficult things that you'd better just leave it to the well educated to deal with and not concern yourself with these topics. It's sad because one of the old slogans was "Theory is a weapon in the hands of the workers" but of course then ends being "theory is a weapon in the hands of the vanguard" and I see a bit of this informal vanguardism taking place amongsta intersectionalista's too.

That's just wankers. They'd be the same anyway. Cults might help them a bit but not much.

 

[butchersapron]

Militant had their own language and gestures par excellence though I mean they're a great example.

Astonishing really that the managed to get such a large amount of support for a while in Liverpool when they talked the way they did and used such awful jargon.

You were what, 8?

 

[frogwoman]

Militant had their own language and gestures par excellence though I mean they're a great example.

Astonishing really that the managed to get such a large amount of support for a while in Liverpool when they talked the way they did and used such awful jargon.

also its quite common among them to talk about "dot and comma" ie "every dot and comma of our programme is based on marxist dialectics"

 

[DotCommunist]

Militant had their own language and gestures par excellence though I mean they're a great example.

Astonishing really that the managed to get such a large amount of support for a while in Liverpool when they talked the way they did and used such awful jargon.

Militant had Jazz hands? I thought they got invented at occupy movements

 

[Delroy Booth]

You were what, 8?

My mum and a few other family members were all militant sympathetic Labour members in Liverpool in the 80's.

 

[butchersapron]

My mum and a few other family members were all militant sympathetic Labour members in Liverpool in the 80's.

Yeah but you were what, 8?

 

[Delroy Booth]

Yeah but you were what, 8?

Less probably.

I was very astute for my age though

 

[J Ed]

Parsing through a few twitter reactions to the protests at ULU this week, one thing that seems to come up a few times and it's something that has been mentioned to me by otherwise politically sympathetic people in the past, is the fact that the left often comes across as just another fashion subculture. There are definitely people who want to get involved with left activism, or agree on specific issues which the left currently organises itself around, but they hear language like 'intersectional', get told to check their privilege or see students constructing shields to look like an Edward Said book or whatever and think to themselves that they do not want to spend any time with these people at all.

They think of the left as a fashion subculture, sort of like how at school you had goths and stuff.

 

[frogwoman]

"trotsky is my homeboy" etc

 

[butchersapron]

Parsing through a few twitter reactions to the protests at ULU this week, one thing that seems to come up a few times and it's something that has been mentioned to me by otherwise politically sympathetic people in the past, is the fact that the left often comes across as just another fashion subculture. There are definitely people who want to get involved with left activism, or agree on specific issue which the left currently organises itself around, but they hear language like 'intersectional', get told to check their privilege or see students constructing shields to look like an Edward Said book or whatever an think to themselves that they do not want to spend any time with these people at all.

They think of the left as a fashion subculture, sort of like how at school you had goths and stuff.

Spot on. It's them doing that. Not me. You'd think the post 92 expansion of uni education would make fingers in the class but it's been 20 years of separation.

 

[frogwoman]

Parsing through a few twitter reactions to the protests at ULU this week, one thing that seems to come up a few times and it's something that has been mentioned to me by otherwise politically sympathetic people in the past, is the fact that the left often comes across as just another fashion subculture. There are definitely people who want to get involved with left activism, or agree on specific issue which the left currently organises itself around, but they hear language like 'intersectional', get told to check their privilege or see students constructing shields to look like an Edward Said book or whatever an think to themselves that they do not want to spend any time with these people at all.

They think of the left as a fashion subculture, sort of like how at school you had goths and stuff.

they're not always wrong.

 

[Idris2002]

some marxist stuff IS deliberately obfuscational (altho not necessarily to exclude people, but to make the person saying it sound clever) ime

Because it's translated from the German, a lot of it.

 

[Bakunin]

Militant had Jazz hands? I thought they got invented at occupy movements

Ploughshares were worse. A heated meeting there could have been mistaken for a Saturday Night Fever tribute concert.

 

[Belushi]

Less probably.

I was very astute for my age though

I was at my most political as an eight year old. Absolutely believed my dad when he told me Leonid Brezhnev was the leader of the worlds working classes and couldn't wait to grow up and defect to the Eastern Bloc.

 

[treelover]

when i first joined the sp i found all the talk of "layers" etc really off putting, and then about two years later i started using that terminology myself

I hate that term, so mechanistic, etc.

 

[frogwoman]

it makes me think of like soil or a carpet.

 

[Pickman's model]

also its quite common among them to talk about "dot and comma" ie "every dot and comma of our programme is based on marxist dialectics"

what about the words?

 

[Pickman's model]

it makes me think of like soil or a carpet.

or soiling a carpet

 

[treelover]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/10/police-violence-students-workers-protests

Laura on the new student uprisings

no comments yet...