Gricean Rhetoric at Berkeley -- and Dennis Dutton

--- by JLS
---- for the GC

JASON KENNEDY writes in his commentary on the 'historical avant garde' in his observation re 'culturism':


This perhaps also explains the collective fascination there with unreadable critical theory such as Judith Butler, that called to mind, who was it? Poe? Lamenting that while mystics appeared to possess all sorts of amazing powers, they singly lacked the ability to relate their experiences in anything approaching readable prose

Kramer may be able, if he so desires, to retell the story of Butler, as I experienced it in the days of Phil-Lit. I think she was still teaching at Chicago. We discussed her at length, as I recall, vis a vis Dutton's judging her the worst writer for some year of grice.

Oddly, yesterday I noticed in the best-selling table of my favourite bookshop here a new book by the lady.

She is a genius! Of course totally incomprehensible, but our friend Judith Evans, of Cardiff (formerly of Bath) loves her! I never understood her, or Sedgwick (the late Eve).


fascination there with unreadable critical theory such as Judith Butler, that called to mind, who was it? Poe? Lamenting that while mystics appeared to possess all sorts of amazing powers, they singly lacked the ability to relate their experiences in anything approaching readable prose

Well, yes. And Poe knew about them. Compare Milton -- 'those dark satanic mills'. Prose is prose is prose, though. (As opposed to verse).

I think the idea by Butler and Sedgewick was to adapt some of the oddest bits of vocabulary by people like Grice's colleague at Oxford: Austin -- the performative, say -- with a sprinkle of Foucault, and Derrida and Deleuze. It IS totally incomprehensible, -- but then, as they say, would ONE pay for college if one were taught just stuff that you can read on your own, at the solitude of your armchair, and for your pleasure?!

--- Since Butler teaches Rhetoric at Berkeley this may connect with Grice -- since, hey, the man taught there some 15 years or so. From 1967 till his retirement as Emeritus. Toulmin, a sometime Oxford philosopher like Grice, has (or had -- he died last year) commented on the sad proceedings of his "Uses of Argument": while intended as a philosophical work for serious philosophical students, it has become the bill of fare of all those course in rhetorics. Why?!