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Say it again, this time in English
Global Sex by Dennis Altman
Chicago UP, £15.50, 216 pp £14.50 (99p p&p) 0870 155 7222
A good writer ought to be able to avoid jargon, whether academic or pseudo-academic, especially in a book aimed at a popular market. Otherwise the book, whatever its merits, will be a waste of precious reading time.
Global Sex deals with a very important and interesting subject. The process of globalisation may very well have changed our attitudes about sex, perhaps very greatly, and it is important to consider how, and, if so, whether it matters. Yet from the beginning, this book is a hard and unrewarding read; before it reaches any conclusions it has long since lost the reader.
As far as I can understand it, the author - who is professor of politics, sociology and anthropology at La Trobe University in Australia - is searching for a "global sexual politics" which would restrain the painful inequalities and social dislocations brought about by globalisation. But Professor Altman's language is inelegant, peppered with confusing jargon and constantly interrupted with quotations that are often even worse.
What, for instance can be the point of quoting with agreement, as he does, someone who writes like this: "What is new about the modern global system is the chronic intensification of patterns of interconnectness mediated by such phenomena as the modern communications industry and new information technology and the spread of globalisation in and through new dimensions of interconnectedness: technological, organizational, administrative and legal, among others, each with their own logic and dynamic of change"?
Why couldn't he say it more simply himself? This astonishing verbosity serves only to obscure what is blindingly obvious, and to infuriate the reader.
It might hardly seem worthwhile for a reviewer to devote space to a book only to attack it. But I would like to register a protest against this idiom. It seems to have become acceptable in the academic world to write, and in publishing to print, general books on major subjects which are almost incomprehensible to the educated reader. This is partly because lazy, undisciplined writing has, with the fall in general standards of literacy, become acceptable; partly because many of the ideas now current in the academy, as they say, are often extremely tendentious, and the language in which they are expressed is unclear for that reason.
It is a fair bet that the reader is in for obfuscation when someone uses the word "hegemonic". There's not all that much wrong with the word itself, but it became politicised years ago, and is now a useful marker for muddled thinking. "Hegemonic masculinity" is a central idea in this book and in the introduction the author gratefully pays tribute to the writer who defined this phrase as "the con figuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women".
I defy anyone to translate this into plain English. Yet this is the way politicised academics talk these days, and with the globalisation of English, it is probably all too hegemonic.
There are other words which are often markers for this kind of writing. The neologism "gendered", much used here, is one and is equally confusing. What is the general reader to make of the statement, made in passing in this book, that religious "fundamentalism is gendered"? If it has any real meaning, surely it can only be either trivial or extremely complex. Either way the phrase is only comprehensible if you already know what it means, if you are already familiar with the particular jargon of political activism.
There is nothing wrong with having a particular political attitude, and Professor Altman describes his own as neo-Marxist. What's wrong is that an important opportunity to discuss an important subject has been wasted. What's wrong is that there are scores of books like this. People are encouraged to write theses like this. The standard of general debate is gradually lowered. People turn more and more away, frustrated, from verbiage, where they might have found enlightenment. Hardly anyone protests.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, May 27, 2001
