On Journals and Prose

My two questions from this week have emerged from the Judith Butler piece, A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back, both centered around the journal, Philosophy and Literature—which Butler describes as the self-proclaimed “arbiter of good prose.” 

I agree with Butler’s staunch defense of questioning common sense and provoking “new ways of looking at a familiar world”, and was reminded of David Harvey’s quote in the introduction to his Companion to Marx’s Capital: “Real learning always entails a struggle to understand the unknown.”

 

Butler describes Philosophy and Literature as a “culturally conservative academic journal” which naturally led me down a longer-than-anticipated visit to the journal's website. I was greeted with a video presented by the Philosophy and Literature’s editor Garry L. Hagberg, who rails against the “jargon infested” work that litters the journal’s field, locating Philosophy and Literature in clear opposition to such bothersome clutter. 

However, Hagberg’s rallying cry is somewhat undermined by his description of Philosophy and Literature as “Readily comprehensible to any intelligent reader”—a line that itself smacks of elitism. Who, indeed, falls into Hagberg’s category? Very few people, I inferred, outside of academia. 

While I wholeheartedly agree with Butler’s op-ed, I do, simultaneously, know that academia is exceptionally inaccessible—especially in terms of funding—to many working-class people. Excessive jargon—while not the most pivotal piece of the puzzle—certainly doesn't help with broader accessibility failings.

Crucially, I also don’t think this jargon discourse should be ceded to the right. Marx, and many major left theorists, have understood the power—and complications—of developing straightforward prose. The lively readability of The Communist Manifesto, for instance, sits in stark contrast to the dense opening three chapters of Capital. This thought process led to the formation of my two questions, which are as follows: 

This thought process led to the formation of my two questions, which are as follows: 

1. As scholars (especially those of us who position ourselves as ‘public facing’) how do we find the right balance between Butler’s call for preserving intellectual resources “as we make our way toward the politically new” while still making our writing and research broadly accessible to those outside of academia?
a. Would Giroux et al’s “language of possibility” be a helpful concept to apply here? 

2. How are academic journals formed? I would be intrigued to hear Dr. Whaley explain the founding process for Addressing the Crisis: The Stuart Hall Project, especially considering it is an open access journal. 
a. Do journals often have an ideological underpinning (such as Philosophy and Literature’s cultural conservatism or, in contrast, Antipode’s radical geography) or is this positioning rare?