Re: language: a plea for tolerance!

John M. Clark (jclark2@BGNET.BGSU.EDU)
Mon, 14 Oct 1996 12:48:20 -0400


Steve Krause writes: "All I'm saying Tom is that you seem to me to be
awfully dismissive of this stuff, which, imho, ain't gonna wash most of the
time. You can't say that most theory is just "butt ugly" writing without
talking about specifics in a setting like this."

To which I can't resist appending...

Remember Terry Eagleton--natch, a theorist, but still...--who said
that anyone who claims to oppose all theory is really saying "all theory
but my own," because no one is without theory. Now, if Tom has a specific
kind or manifestation of theory in mind, well, maybe... Theory-bashing as a
generalized adoption of moral high ground, however, doesn't (as the
Baudrillard-loving Dr. Krause submits) wash with me. Neither does
academic-theory bashing, as a Cartesian stance. What academician is without
theories of appropriate and inappropriate
academic/intellectual/scholarly/pedagogical/etc. behavior? JMC

Dr. John M. Clark -- General Studies Writing -- Bowling Green State University

"A way of seeing is...a way of not seeing." -- Kenneth Burke