Prepare for Controversy!

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Clarissa

July 6, 2014

I’m discovering a disturbing trend in scholarly writing. One book I read after another (and I read in a variety of fields and languages) starts with something like, “This books aims to court controversy. This study will be very controversial!” And then the book, of course, proceeds to make some extremely trivial and self-evident claims.

What’s disturbing is not only that these books never manage to deliver on their promises of controversy but also the authors’ belief that this sort of warning is necessary whenever a study represents even the most minuscule deviation from “the norm.”

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9 responses to “Prepare for Controversy!”

Jones

July 6, 2014

It’s like the radicals with the radical haircuts …

You know what’s inside the tin isn’t the same as what’s on the outside.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 6, 2014
  
  It’s really funny how they keep repeating, “I’m about to say something shocking! Prepare! I’m on the verge of saying it!”
  
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Z

July 6, 2014

Do they mean they are writing something polemical and opinionated, rather than offering something more fully researched and logically argued?

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David Bellamy

July 6, 2014

I think this is wishful thinking on the part of the writers. Every academic dreams of saying something shocking and profound that revolutionizes some field or other.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 6, 2014
  
  Exactly. 🙂 The most recent example of “a hugely controversial statement” is that good literary criticism requires the use of reason. 🙂
  
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J. Otto Pohl

July 7, 2014

Much of academia is so orthodox, somewhere between following a central party line and adhering to a religious dogma, that even the slightest deviation from that line and dogma is considered extremely transgressive. Of course any real dissent is completely marginalized and excluded.

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  July 7, 2014
  
  This, a whooooooole bunch of times.
  
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musteryou

July 7, 2014

I remember when I was first taught the word, ‘controversial’, in high school, after migrating from Zim. Like everything I experienced then, it seemed like a rather watered down word, even rather passive. It seems like you need an assembly to sit down and be undecided for a very long period of time, for something to end up being deemed “controversial”.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 7, 2014
  
  I know, I had a very similar feeling after coming to Canad from the Ukraine of 1990s. I was especially shocked at how tame and boring the newscasts were. Our news were totally hardcore in comparison. 🙂
  
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