Comments on: “A Blog Post”

By: Rana

Rana — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:22:13 +0000

I’ve tended to use the capitalized form as a way of distinguishing signifier from signified (e.g. Nature), but I’m finding myself puzzled as to how to do that when the nouns and concepts involved are already capitalized.

Other than coming up with a new vocabulary entirely (e.g. nonhuman organisms, physical environment, in my own field), I suspect one is stuck with the quotation marks in short pieces and the obligatory discussion of terminology in the preface of longer ones.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:09:49 +0000

“thanks.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a concept possessed of dubious genealogy is in want of quotation marks.

However little known the feelings or views on such a concept may be on first reference, this truth is so well fixed in the conventions of the surrounding discourse, that it is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of the specialists.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:13:10 +0000

Right. But the problem is what follows on that initial acknowledgement. If I take my own critique really seriously, from that point on I should always say "Africa" rather than Africa if I'm dealing with pre-1750 history and need somehow to refer to the prior way of conceptualizing the subject. I could write an article or teach a class on states of the sahel, savanna and forest in West Africa, but I'd struggle mightily to never refer that back to some larger project of African history, etc.--so what do I do at that point? Always bracket "Africa" in quotes? That's the strategy of writing that some of us used for a while, but it gets pretty arch and tedious in short order, partly because you're making clear just how impotent the conceptual argument about the term really is, just how indispensible it has become to knowledge production and everyday reference. (This is one of the basic epistemological drivers behind postcolonial theory, in the end: the inescapability of referents that the critic would desperately like to escape, how to "provincialize the West", as Chakrabarty puts it.) And precisely because so many words that academics use are both the label and the label's referent, that kind of gesture starts to metastasize pretty rapidly. For the same reasons, I should probably bracket "states" when I'm talking about African history. And so on. A more compact way to summarize the dilemma can be found in this video after the 3:28 mark.

By: Gil

Gil — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:33:31 +0000

Actually, I think the example you almost provided as postmodernist wouldn’t have been postmodernist at all. It would simply have been grammatical. Putting quotes around “Africa” in that context (or, for that matter, as I just did) is a way of acknowledging that you’re dealing with the label, rather than the label’s referent. You could, for instance, have written “the word ‘Africa’ isn’t an accurate way to describe…” Using quotes in that context simply gives you a shorter, more graceful way to say “the word ‘Africa'” without having to say “the word.”

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:21:44 +0000

(Would someone please put quotes around the previous comment?)

(Done–tb)

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:15:43 +0000

"Blog".