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Kreyol pale, kreyol komprann

TorgoX on 2004-10-05T06:24:28

Dear Log,

I was chatting with Carl Steadman the other night (he's apparently a fan of the elevated depths of my thesis, to my extreme surprise). And he was telling me how he used to study Lacan. Carl said that Lacan made his writings deliberately opaque, deliberately hard to understand. ("but that's an important aspect of what they impart to the student. also keeps out the fanboys.") And I thought, humph, Voltaire with not approve! Clarté et tout ça.

But this past week I've been rereading Orwell's 1984, and thinking how, yes, much of it really is insightful and perceptive book, just like people say. And then I stumbled on these comments that random doofuses have made about the profundity of 1984 in their minds.

And I thought, ya know, maybe 1984 would have benefitted from just a few drops of that opaqueness that Lacan liked to smear around. To keep out the fanboys.

Haitian sounds like French

BooK on 2004-10-05T08:04:13

"Pal franse pa di lespri pou sa"... Hé mais je comprends ce que ça veut dire ! C'est du créole ?

Re:Haitian sounds like French

TorgoX on 2004-10-05T08:27:36

Yup. But it gets more complicated.

Re:Haitian sounds like French

rafael on 2004-10-06T08:56:42

You've been hanging too much on #perlfr.

Orwell

brev on 2004-10-05T10:02:51

I just finished a book of Orwell's columns from 1942-1945.

One column is about how Italian war propaganda did not bother to even be self-consistent, as the British equivalent was. He decides the British effort was a waste, and in a throwaway line wonders if even the enemy could be switched without anyone noticing.

One by one, you can watch many of the ideas of 1984 crystallizing. It's fascinating.

But there's a lot more to this book. I kept seeing parallels and contrasts with our own era, where the arch-capitalists of the USA and Britain are at war with unmistakably bad people, and the left is divided about this.

Re:Orwell

pudge on 2004-10-07T01:34:15

Careful! If you compare the pro-war people today to being on the Good Side in WWII, you risk becoming one of us. :-)

Mmmmmm....no.

kingubu on 2004-10-05T11:46:02

And I thought, ya know, maybe 1984 would have benefitted from just a few drops of that opaqueness that Lacan liked to smear around. To keep out the fanboys.

Piffle. Real depth is never penetrated by the fanboy gaze, so why muddy the surface?

In any case, George himself had rather different ideas about clarity of expression, so it would've been a tough sell.

-ubu

Re:Mmmmmm....no.

TorgoX on 2004-10-05T22:15:57

PIFFLE? KERFUFFLE!!!!

Re:Mmmmmm....no.

kingubu on 2004-10-05T23:56:50

KERFUFFLE??? BALDERDASH!!!!!

Re:Mmmmmm....no.

pudge on 2004-10-07T01:35:01

BALDERDASH???? FLUMMERY!!!!!