the suchness of academic writing and a short critique of it

a piece of academic writing strives to make explicit to a discerning, skeptical reader exactly what is sufficient to allow that reader to understand and subscribe to the writing’s assertions.

the institution of academic writing presupposes that the words of a well-formulated argument should at least logically signify if not communicate the author’s thesis.

in the ideal situation, the writing and the reader engage in a process of thinking together. the writing thinks a thought, speaks that thought, the reader thinks the writing’s thought, responds, then the writing thinks a thought and speaks it in answer to the reader’s response (though perhaps not immediately). this process continues until the piece brings the reader’s thoughts into alignment with its own.

i reject the notion that for every thought of worth, importance and profundity, there are words that can signify that thought.

i also reject the notion that it must be, that it should be, within the context of a particular thesis, the burden of the author to bring the reader’s thoughts into accordance with the author’s thoughts.

the greatest theses, i would say the wisest (as wisdom connotes the ethical) cannot be made explicit. they can only be housed in and commanded by the minds of those who grasp them. they may not even be articulable to those who command them.

that is why the wisest ones always tailor their teachings to individuals’ needs. they understand that words are received differently by and produce different thoughts in different people, that people occupy varying positions in the spaces of wisdom, meaning and experience and thus require different images, combinations of sounds, “triggers” if you will, to bring them into a state of understanding. that is why the wisest ones gesture around and toward their theses with flexibility.

when made explicit (and “explicit” here means rendered within the confines of language, which means that the explicit is paradoxically not explicit) great theses are stripped of their full profundity, exposed, naked, insufficient, incapable of moving the “skeptical” reader:

“not two.”

“do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

they cannot withstand interrogatories.

they are not meant to, because when articulated and put forth in writing, these theses are offered up, sacrificed to the reader. they are in effect, a sacrifice for the reader. if the reader accepts a thesis as a sacrifice for her, she will attempt to rise to it. she will accept, on faith, that she must change, and not the thesis. if she does not, she may attack it’s “logical fallacies”, blame the argumentation for not thinking its thoughts into her, or, ignore it altogether. part of the sacrifice of a great thesis is knowing it will invariably be treated this way.

i hope academic writing comes to understand its limitations.