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A failure to be talked to
I have finally given up on "Talkin' up to the white woman: Indigenous women and feminism" by Aileen Moreton-Robinson (as recced to me by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fire_fly before my panel. She did say I might find Sister Girl an easier read!). It's not that it was bad, it's just that I am pretty much incapable of reading more than about 10 pages of academic humanities theory without my eyes glazing over and my brain dribbling out of my ears. Which is a pity, since afaict there's very little indepth discussion of race in Australia that isn't written by and for humanities academics, luckily at least some of it is in the form of short essays.
Still, if you are capable of reading humanities academic prose and have an interest in the subject it is, afaict, pretty good if not made of sparkling prose (keeping in mind that I only got through the introduction, conclusion, and a few pages of chapter 1)
In general I find myself annoyed at the yawning chasm that often gapes between the low level spoon-fed explanations given in layman's guides to a subject and the dense, impenetrable, jargon-filled prose of professional discussions of it. Afaict a lot of the time the only way to bridge the gap is to do the relevant university degree or equivalent (and possible also postgrad, I have 2/3 of a physics major and still don't understand physics papers) which is a pretty big ask. I mean I'm not sure it's anyone's fault or what you can do about it, most interested non-experts seem either happy enough with the Dummies Guide version or dedicated enough to bring themselves up to speed, but it does make life difficult forindecisive Renaissance-women such as myself who would like to have a slightly better understanding of lots of subjects without having to become an actual expert.
It's especially unfortunate when this gap appears with subjects like race where it is actually important for regular people to be able to understand what's going on. A lot of the time there will be attempts to bridge the gap, thus all the attempts to make politics/economics/health/feminism etc understandable to your everyday joe (by the government or other interested parties) and there's a great continuum of levels of race discussion in America, but not so much here except occasionally in broader discussions about other subjects (ie there's a number of blogs like mine which talk about race every now and then, but I can think of a total of two where it's the main focus) So on the whole would-be aussie anti-racists are stuck with either the incredibly bland "Lets all hold hands and be nice to each other!" government line, or the unfocussed mishmash of popular culture and whatever their friends happen to be talking about, or academic papers. (Or reading about stuff overseas, which is certainly a good place to start but not much good for specifics)
Admittedly, I think I am particularly bad at reading academic writing compared to other people with the same intelligence and knowledge, it caused me no end of pain during my Phd (and also made me vow to make my writing comprehensible. Which it is, imo, if anyone's interested in learning about sporadic simple group recognition algorithms...(*))
EDIT: To quotekadeton below, who makes a point I forgot to: "I see it as an unfortunate trade-off. You can express a concept with great depth and complexity using high-level technical language but make it inaccessible to all but experts in the field, or you can express it shallowly and simplistically but make it accessible to everyone". The main way I made my thesis more accessible was pretty much by turning the first third into a short introductory textbook. And yes, most people are happy with one or the other. I just personally find it annoying when I want something in between :) That said I think a LOT of academic writing is much more opaque than it needs to be, partly because being smart doesn't mean you're a good writer, and partly because of various unfortunate aspects of academic culture. (I mean, if there had been more decent introductory textbooks on the subjects I was writing about, I would have just referenced them...)
Also: I'm not saying ALL of race/health/economics etc needs to be made accessible to the public, especially not the more abstract theory, but I think these are subjects people need (and want) a certain basic, practical understanding of in order for society (and individuals) to function well.
Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but I had an urge to meta and all the other possible subjects are WAY too much for my brain today. And now I may go try to eat something without setting myself on fire.
(*)No this is not my thesis :P
fire_fly before my panel. She did say I might find Sister Girl an easier read!). It's not that it was bad, it's just that I am pretty much incapable of reading more than about 10 pages of academic humanities theory without my eyes glazing over and my brain dribbling out of my ears. Which is a pity, since afaict there's very little indepth discussion of race in Australia that isn't written by and for humanities academics, luckily at least some of it is in the form of short essays. Still, if you are capable of reading humanities academic prose and have an interest in the subject it is, afaict, pretty good if not made of sparkling prose (keeping in mind that I only got through the introduction, conclusion, and a few pages of chapter 1)
In general I find myself annoyed at the yawning chasm that often gapes between the low level spoon-fed explanations given in layman's guides to a subject and the dense, impenetrable, jargon-filled prose of professional discussions of it. Afaict a lot of the time the only way to bridge the gap is to do the relevant university degree or equivalent (and possible also postgrad, I have 2/3 of a physics major and still don't understand physics papers) which is a pretty big ask. I mean I'm not sure it's anyone's fault or what you can do about it, most interested non-experts seem either happy enough with the Dummies Guide version or dedicated enough to bring themselves up to speed, but it does make life difficult for
It's especially unfortunate when this gap appears with subjects like race where it is actually important for regular people to be able to understand what's going on. A lot of the time there will be attempts to bridge the gap, thus all the attempts to make politics/economics/health/feminism etc understandable to your everyday joe (by the government or other interested parties) and there's a great continuum of levels of race discussion in America, but not so much here except occasionally in broader discussions about other subjects (ie there's a number of blogs like mine which talk about race every now and then, but I can think of a total of two where it's the main focus) So on the whole would-be aussie anti-racists are stuck with either the incredibly bland "Lets all hold hands and be nice to each other!" government line, or the unfocussed mishmash of popular culture and whatever their friends happen to be talking about, or academic papers. (Or reading about stuff overseas, which is certainly a good place to start but not much good for specifics)
Admittedly, I think I am particularly bad at reading academic writing compared to other people with the same intelligence and knowledge, it caused me no end of pain during my Phd (and also made me vow to make my writing comprehensible. Which it is, imo, if anyone's interested in learning about sporadic simple group recognition algorithms...(*))
EDIT: To quote
kadeton below, who makes a point I forgot to: "I see it as an unfortunate trade-off. You can express a concept with great depth and complexity using high-level technical language but make it inaccessible to all but experts in the field, or you can express it shallowly and simplistically but make it accessible to everyone". The main way I made my thesis more accessible was pretty much by turning the first third into a short introductory textbook. And yes, most people are happy with one or the other. I just personally find it annoying when I want something in between :) That said I think a LOT of academic writing is much more opaque than it needs to be, partly because being smart doesn't mean you're a good writer, and partly because of various unfortunate aspects of academic culture. (I mean, if there had been more decent introductory textbooks on the subjects I was writing about, I would have just referenced them...)Also: I'm not saying ALL of race/health/economics etc needs to be made accessible to the public, especially not the more abstract theory, but I think these are subjects people need (and want) a certain basic, practical understanding of in order for society (and individuals) to function well.
Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but I had an urge to meta and all the other possible subjects are WAY too much for my brain today. And now I may go try to eat something without setting myself on fire.
(*)No this is not my thesis :P