Good writers are often fooled by the lure of plain English. Most academics in the humanities are not duped so easily, though. They understand the power of jargon, obscurity and incoherence. Those aspiring to follow in their footsteps would do well to consider the following tips and tricks.
Titles. Once upon a time, scholars thought titles should be succinct and descriptive. Now we know better. Instead, introduce your work with an unintelligible phrase such as âInterrupted Modernityâ, âSovereign Emergenciesâ, âOverthrowing Geographyâ or âViolent Accumulationâ. âBodies that Speakâ and âEmpires without Imperialismâ also make for great titles, even if bodies cannot speak and empires cannot exist without imperialism. Everyone knows that confusion attracts attention. Obscure quotes also make for great titles, especially if they include grammatical errors or antiquated speech. âOh motherland I pledge to theeâ, âWhat does not respect bordersâ and âFortress Europe in the fieldâ are good examples.
Invented words. Language is subject to your imagination, not the other way around. Change nouns into adjectives and adjectives into nouns. âHypervisibilityâ, âinteragentivityâ, âinteranimalityâ, âprecolonialityâ, âspacialityâ and âsubalternityâ are all great words. Count the number of words youâve invented or new concepts youâve employed. Try doubling it.
Between, beyond and towards. Study the stuff âbetween empire and identitiesâ. Go beyond the Arab Spring, beyond desire. Work towards a post-Marxist historiography or theory of counter-modernity. Write about the genealogy of something or, better still, towards the genealogy of something. âToward a genealogy of black female sexualityâ â perfect!
Shudder quotes. Language is poisonous, so it is essential to place shudder quotes around as many words as possible â the âWestâ and âGlobal Southâ, the âEuropeanâ and ânon-Europeanâ worlds, âtraditionalâ healing practices and âmodernâ identities. There are no experts, only âexpertsâ. Shudder quotes make it difficult for others to accuse you of philosophical naivety.
Verbs. Use verbs along with their passives in the same sentence as often as possible, as in âI will address the spatial and temporal re-mapping of these two distinct traumatic memories as they shape and are shaped by one another.â Scholars study the assumptions and ideologies that constitute and are constituted by aid. They try to grasp how traumatic events influence and are influenced by norms, identities and interests. This signals you have mastered the passive tense, and that the passive tense has been mastered by you.
The re-prefix. You should repeat and re-repeat verbs as often as possible with a re-prefix. Aim to frame and re-frame, imagine and re-imagine, inscribe and re-inscribe. This signals and re-signals to your readers that you are in command of revisionism.
Agency. Style is important in the humanities, but so is content. Be sure that you find agency among the downtrodden. The people of the Global South did not adopt Western knowledge; they adapted it. They did not replicate European sciences but subverted their racist agendas. Muslim women have not learned feminism from the West; they were feminists long before feminism existed.
Obfuscation. Do not write about history or even historicity, only âhistoricalityâ. Colonialism is widely understood by the general public and should therefore be avoided. Instead study âcolonialityâ, âsemicolonialismâ or âEurocolonialsâ. Physical violence is blasĂŠ; real scholars write about âdiscursive violenceâ. Instead of modernity or even post-modernity, consider âtransmodernitiesâ and ânonmodernitiesâ. Forget memory; study âpost-memoryâ.
Complication. The general rule of thumb is to complicate simple ideas. âLiving togetherâ, in the words of one scholar, âoscillates between the tone of practical serenity and tragic pathos, between philosophical wisdom and desperate anguishâ. It is both âsimple evidence and the promise of the inaccessibleâ, while it opens the possibility of a âunified selfâ and âsynchronous timeâ. If only this were more widely known, so much domestic friction could be avoided.
Prepositions. Many verbs can take more than one preposition. Be sure to use as many of them as possible. The politics of protest have not escaped the intricacies of speaking about, for and instead of others. Memory-making occurs in and across multiple spaces. Modernity is emerging in and between Europe and the Arab world.
Trends. Nothing is stable or monolithic. Everything is fluid, fragmented, hybrid, multi-directional and unsusceptible to articulation. There are multiple modernities. Memory is polymorphous. Nothing is spatially fixed or geography-bound. The line between words and things is permeable. Binary oppositions are evil. Decentre everything. Blur boundaries. Jump into an abyss so deep and profound that no one has any idea what you are talking about.
Elegant incoherence. Use the word âasâ to connect unrelated ideas without having to explain why they are related. Examples include âarchitecture as relicâ, âresistance as negotiationâ and an analysis of the tension between âbody as signâ and âbody as corpusâ.
Sites. Everything is a site for discursive production. Performance apparently positions the post-colonial female body as a particularly charged site of cultural contestation in the process of constructing a hybrid subjectivity. The body is a site of rupture and signification. The law is a site of subaltern negotiations with the state.
Interruption. Good scholars know to interrupt themselves mid-sentence for clarification. As one of them has explained, âanalysis of diasporic memory â or, more accurately, remembrances â conjures other times and placesâ. This in turn âhelps us recognise the local population as imaginers and producers (and not, at best, merely consumers) of their own modernity â or perhaps better, nonmodernity, as the modernity that unfoldedâ. This signals to the reader your sense of profound anguish â or rather your mastery of interruption dashes â or, perhaps still better, your mastery of interruption parentheses.
Read next:Â How (not) to write: nine more tips for academics in the humanities
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Zachary J. Foster is a PhD candidate in Near Eastern studies at Princeton University and a product manager at Academia.edu. He would like to make clear that all the examples of unintelligible academese given above are real.
POSTSCRIPT:
Print headline: Muddying the waters
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