In praise of academic difficulty

It is a plague that afflicts popular writing about literature and the humanities-social sciences. It is seen in Indian and Western media alike, in newspaper columns, blogs, and trade books. It is often but not always those trotted out by right-wing culture warriors, and sometimes by those with one foot in the academy. I refer to the chronic grousing about the 'difficulty' of academic scholarship in general and about literary criticism and social theory in particular. This grousing has a few favorite targets-- the unholy trinity of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, but others too, such as Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, Lacan, Chomsky, or Zizek.

The work of such scholars is routinely criticized for being 'difficult' and 'inaccessible', for putting paid to the good old days when social theory or literary criticism *really* illuminated the world, and for destroying, variously, literature, society, Western civilization, the legacy of the Enlightenment, and human civilization itself. The New York Times, for instance, carried an appallingly ignorant article on September 22, 2001 which in a perverse and twisted way managed to blame postmodernism and postcolonialism for the 9/11 attacks. The Times' obituary of Derrida was also a masterpiece of ignorance, condemning Derrida for being 'abstruse', and provoking protests in response from numerous academics.

These arguments seem tiringly similar to arguments against the humanities and social sciences that I used to routinely encounter as an undergraduate studying literature in Bombay University the better part of some two decades ago. I was confronted countless times with inane questions about the value of the humanities: But what do you study in English literature? But how does one study it? What is there to study about books? What is this anthropology? I also had to hear, often as a member of a captive audience, tedious cliches about the limited value of an education in the humanities. Examples: Why bother with books? What about the book of life? Life is the best teacher, and so on.

And, therein lies the nub of it. The arguments we see today in the media about the difficulty of academic scholarship-- even when they might be posed by those with a background in literature or the humanities-- are not very different from these crude and unthinking accusations against literature, literary criticism, and the humanities that anyone doing an arts degree in India had to suffer 15-20 years ago. (I hope things are better now).

In this vein of thinking, literary criticism or social theory is something you do-- or should be able to do-- on the weekends, after your 'real' job, whatever that is. There is an implicit denigration here of academic scholarship and of the humanities and social sciences. In the Indian context, this is a sorry consequence of the post-independence obsession with science and technology at the cost of other areas of inquiry. It also has to do with the belief that scholarly work is something anyone can do. The complaints sometimes seem rooted in a kind of anger at being left out of some elitist insider club of academics (no such club exists, of course, except in the heads of those who imagine that it does).

A populist philistinism bred by the internet and web, which considers generalist dabblings and ruminations the highest form of intellectual reflection has led to an amplification of such sentiment in recent times. This ressentiment, like all forms of chronic hostility, lacks reflexivity, and is unable or unwilling to recognize the roots of its own malcontent.

There is another factor at work here too. I think that has to do with the fact that most academics in the humanities and social sciences do not actively market or promote themselves. They take pride, justly, in what they do. But they do not call themselves 'innovators' or 'original thinkers' or 'entrepreneurs' or 'visionaries' or 'thought-leaders' or 'cutting-edge' or 'dazzling intellects'. The convention in the academy generally is to do your work, to let your reputation develop based on your work, and to not worry about being a media personality with a PR machine. (There are exceptions to this, of course, but in over two decades of knowing, meeting, and knowing of many, many, many academics in numerous institutions across three continents, I would say that the vast majority of academics are primarily interested in their work rather than in burnishing their reputations or legacies.)

There are strange bedfellows in the confederacy of grousers, and they traverse national boundaries. Offhand, at least three non-mutual categories come to mind, covering both the Indian diaspora and other groups.

One segment consists of Hindu nationalists in India and the US, who think they are all experts on Indian history and can 'scientifically' disprove the work of fine historians like Romila Thapar. A glance at the large number of Hindu nationalist websites that spew absolute rubbish about Indian history will provide ample evidence of the existence of this lot.

Another segment consists of those who valiantly see themselves as the defenders of all that is glorious about literature against the assault from literary critics in the academy. Among this lot, the discussion of literature rests on vacuous assertions about the 'universality of human experience' and typically relies on misunderstandings of formalist criticism and close reading (One should note here that many of the critics accused of 'difficulty' or 'obscurity' are spectacular close readers).

A third group, regardless of political sympathies, seems to hold naive views about the value of the humanities or of a liberal arts education, often coupled with equally naive views about technological progress, social evolution, meritocracy, and the like.

I am not making a case here that literary criticism or knowledge in the social sciences or humanities are the preserve of a few people in the academy. But such knowledge can only be truly democratized if the effort, rigor, and care that goes into the best work--produced in the academy or elsewhere-- is recognized and appreciated. The solution does not lie in tepid generalizations about human existence or in blanket condemnations of scholars. I am not suggesting either that some scholars or paradigms should be above critique. Far from it. But any such critique should, at least, attempt to be fair, and to rise above the status of a snide two-line dismissal or a smug witticism.

A final thought about difficulty. Plato is difficult. And Wittgenstein. Sheldon Pollock's spectacular and wonderfully written book, The Language of Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Power, and Culture in Premodern India, is difficult. The Duino Elegies are difficult. Austin is difficult. So is Searle. So are Rawls and Nozick. Judth Butler is difficult. As is Montaigne. And Marx. Difficult and rewarding.

Gayatri Spivak has an interesting anecdote about 'difficulty' in an interview with Nermeen Shaikh in the book, The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power. A scholar visiting Columbia University stated, in a talk, that she did not make more than three attempts to read something. If she still found it difficult in third attempt, she abandoned it, not considering it worth her effort. Spivak and her colleague, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, had the same reaction to the scholar's ultimatum about difficulty.

What about Kant?