First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

3 Responses

1. Steve Davis says:

   November 21, 2008 at 6:25 am

   Why persist in perpetuating confusion about liberalism? Liberalism is propaganda code for economic individualism.
   It has nothing at all to do with progressive politics
2. Ramesh Raghuvanshi says:

   December 11, 2008 at 6:06 pm

   It is too early to judge quality of Presidentship of Obama.Obama promised too much to voters of U.S.
   There are many reasons voters preferred Obama.[1] Brankruptcy of Bush administion.[2]Financial crisis[3] Republican candidate is weak.
   Who knows what will happen in future.Fully judge Obama`s admination at least we must wait one year.
3. Phil Cohen says:

   December 13, 2008 at 3:14 pm

   Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Jonathon Derbyshire’s article is his use of quotation marks. Some are used straightforwardly to reproduce statements from people he has interviewed; others are presumably intended to signal that the terms are problematic in some (unspecified) way, and very often it is hard to tell which is which. Thus we learn that John Mc Whorter is known for his critique of ‘victimology’ . Does the use of inverted commas here imply that Derbyshire wishes to dissociate himself from this critique, or just signal that the term itself is contested by others? The whole of the following sentence reads like a reported speech quote from McWhorter , but only one phrase ‘broaden identity’ is put in inverted commas. Did McWhorter somehow signal in the interview that he was using this phrase ironically or is the problematisation again being supplied by Derbyshire? Later on we learn that in Anthony Appiah’s view it is not a question of Obama ‘acting white’ or adopting ‘white ’standards even though he has some difficulty in convincing black people(like white people managing to survive without inverted commas throughout the piece) that he is ‘black enough’. Earlier in the piece there is a sentence which quotes James Baldwin quoting JF Kennedy to the effect that blacks would one day ‘accept and adopt white standards’ ; so here the term white as applied to standards is apparently acceptable without special framing, although there would seem to be just as much or little justification for marking the noun as the adjective.If this is’nt a double standard ,I don’t know what is.

   The over use of inverted commas is a distinctive feature of contemporary academic discourse; especially where ‘identity politics’ goes all out for ‘political correctness/or adopts a ‘post modern’ idiom we get texts which read as if the author was suffering from a permanent stutter. The intended shock effect- to interrupt or challenge dominant definitions- is quite lost through arbitrary (mis)application. This would be merely an annoying stylistic tic were it not for the fact that the practice also inhibits real thoughtfulness. So for example in this article just what is at stake in the interesting title concept of post-racial kitsch both with or without inverted commas, is never really discussed.