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Philosophy and Literature announces
Winners of the Fourth Bad Writing Contest (1998)
Full text at:
http://www.cybereditions.com/aldaily
We are pleased to announce winners of the fourth Bad=20
Writing Contest, sponsored by the scholarly journal=20
Philosophy and Literature.
The Bad Writing Contest celebrates the most stylistically=20
lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles=20
published in the last few years. Ordinary journalism,=20
fiction, departmental memos, etc. are not eligible, nor are=20
parodies: entries must be non-ironic, from serious,=20
published academic journals or books. Deliberate=20
parody cannot be allowed in a field where unintended=20
self-parody is so widespread.
Two of the most popular and influential literary scholars=20
in the U.S. are among those who wrote winning entries in=20
the latest contest.
Judith Butler, a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning professor of=20
rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of=20
California at Berkeley, admired as perhaps "one of the ten=20
smartest people on the planet," wrote the sentence that=20
captured the contest's first prize. Homi K. Bhabha, a=20
leading voice in the fashionable academic field=20
of postcolonial studies, produced the second-prize winner.
"As usual," commented Denis Dutton, editor of Philosophy=20
and Literature, "this year's winners were produced by=20
well-known, highly-paid experts who have no doubt labored=20
for years to write like this. That these scholars must know=20
what they are doing is indicated by the fact that the=20
winning entries were all published by distinguished presses=20
and academic journals."
Professor Butler's first-prize sentence appears in "Further
Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time," an article=20
in the scholarly journal Diacritics (1997):
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is=20
understood to structure social relations in relatively=20
homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power=20
relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and=20
rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the=20
thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form=20
of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as=20
theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the=20
contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed=20
conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent=20
sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
Dutton remarked that "it's possibly the anxiety-inducing=20
obscurity of such writing that has led Professor Warren=20
Hedges of Southern Oregon University to praise Judith=20
Butler as `probably one of the ten smartest people on the=20
planet'."
This year's second prize went to a sentence authored by=20
Homi K. Bhabha, a professor of English at the University of=20
Chicago. He writes in The Location of Culture (Routledge,=20
1994):
If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the=20
uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt,=20
justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition,=20
spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as=20
the desperate effort to "normalize" formally the=20
disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates=20
the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory=20
modality.
This prize-winning entry was nominated by John D. Peters of=20
the University of Iowa, who describes it as "quite=20
splendid: enunciatory modality, indeed!"
Ed Lilley, an art historian at the University of Bristol in=20
the U.K., supplied a sentence by Steven Z. Levine from an=20
anthology entitled Twelve Views of Manet's "Bar" (Princeton=20
University Press, 1996):
As my story is an august tale of fathers and sons, real and=20
imagined, the biography here will fitfully attend to the=20
putative traces in Manet's work of "les noms du p=E8re," a=20
Lacanian romance of the errant paternal phallus ("Les=20
Non-dupes errent"), a revised Freudian novella of the=20
inferential dynamic of paternity which annihilates (and=20
hence enculturates) through the deferred introduction of=20
the third term of insemination the phenomenologically=20
irreducible dyad of the mother and child.
Stewart Unwin of the National Library of Australia passed=20
along this gem from the Australasian Journal of American=20
Studies (December 1997). The author is Timothy W. Luke, and=20
the article is entitled, "Museum Pieces: Politics and=20
Knowledge at the American Museum of Natural History":
Natural history museums, like the American Museum,=20
constitute one decisive means for power to de-privatize and=20
re-publicize, if only ever so slightly, the realms of death=20
by putting dead remains into public service as social=20
tokens of collective life, rereading dead fossils as=20
chronicles of life's everlasting quest for survival,=20
and canonizing now dead individuals as nomological emblems=20
of still living collectives in Nature and History. An=20
anatomo-politics of human and non-human bodies is sustained=20
by accumulating and classifying such necroliths in the=20
museum's observational/expositional performances.
The passage goes on to explain that museum fossils and=20
artifacts are "strange superconductive conduits, carrying=20
the vital elan of contemporary biopower." It's demonstrated=20
with helpful quotations from Michel Foucault's History of=20
Sexuality.
Finally, a tour de force from a 1996 book published by the=20
State University of New York Press. It was located by M.J.=20
Devaney, an editor at the University of Nebraska Press. The=20
author is D.G. Leahy, writing in Foundation: Matter the=20
Body Itself.
Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the=20
exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which=20
it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside,=20
while the equivocal predication of the outside of the=20
absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality=20
so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of=20
the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute=20
identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal=20
predication of identity is possible of the self-identity=20
which is not identity, while identity is univocally=20
predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of=20
the reality of the self). This is the real exteriority of=20
the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely=20
unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the=20
dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the=20
shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of=20
the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other=20
of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the=20
absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision=20
of the shining of the light breaking the dark is=20
the other-identity of the light. The precision of the=20
absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light=20
itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of=20
existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity=20
of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans=20
depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself=20
univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity=20
itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in=20
"self-alienation," not "self-identity, itself in=20
self-alienation" "released" in and by "otherness," and=20
"actual other," "itself," not the abysmal inversion of the=20
light, the reality of the darkness equivocally,=20
absolute identity equivocally predicated of the=20
self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the=20
reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of=20
identity which is the identification person-self).
Dr. Devaney calls this book "absolutely, unequivocally
incomprehensible." While she has supplied further extended=20
quotations to prove her point, this seems to be enough.
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The next round of the Bad Writing Contest, results to be=20
announced at the end of 1999, is now open. There is an=20
endless ocean of pretentious, turgid academic prose being=20
added to daily, and we'll continue to honor it.
Prof. Denis Dutton
Editor, Philosophy and Literature University of Canterbury,=20
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone: 011-643-348-7928
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