Quiz

Posted on | January 17, 2005 | 2 Comments

Who was Robert Hughes talking about in this passage (with or without irony)?

Language does not clarify, it intimidates. It subjects the reader to a rite of passage and extorts assent as the price of entry. For the savant’s thought is so radically original that ordinary words will not do. Its newness requires neologism; it seeks rupture, overgeneralization, oracular pronouncements and pervasive tone of apocalyptic hype. The result is to clear writing what the flowery blandishments of the valets to Gorgibus’s daughters in Molière’s Les précieuses ridicules were to the sincere expression of feeling: a parodical mask, a compound of snobbery and extravagant rhetoric.

Category: Reading

Comments

2 Responses to “Quiz”

  1. Glen
    January 17th, 2005 @ 6:31 pm

    I cheated and did a Google. Check out this rather cool essay (that, stemming from your interests in Orstraya academic history, I am sure you would have already seen):

    http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucault/republic.html

  2. danny
    January 21st, 2005 @ 12:15 am

    I don’t know, but it sure made me think of Clement Greenberg!