(Reply to your email forthcoming; working in chunks, here.)
My opinion is that you have to be either completely in command of your audience or completely in command of your thoughts -- ideally everybody is the latter even if not the former -- to use the high-referential style successfully. (Actually, a lot like in-jokes in certain kinds of fan fiction.) I found Matt Hills to be a good example of that, whereas I don't think Donna Haraway is. Of course, I suppose she'd say that my emphasis on control shows my masculinist/scientific/modernist biases, so there you are. And maybe I need to distinguish between theory and jargon; it is possible to discuss commodity fetishism, for example, for people who are reading at college level without losing them in a forest of terminology that ends up sparking more resentment than understanding. It's even possible to do that with Foucault, though I'm not so sure about Judith Butler.
That's a great explanation of the problems with the journal assignment. My thoughts were more selfish, but your points about the risks to the student and the project of teaching are even more important.
Academia ... it's funny because my husband just got a tenure-track job in the humanities, after several years of adjuncting, and now he at least can be fairly sure that his low salary will be forthcoming next year. Whereas as a lawyer, I am compensated at a rate that ought to make any fair-minded person sick. So the gender dynamics are very much reversed, which I think makes a difference even in a feminist relationship.
My opinion is that you have to be either completely in command of your audience or completely in command of your thoughts -- ideally everybody is the latter even if not the former -- to use the high-referential style successfully. (Actually, a lot like in-jokes in certain kinds of fan fiction.) I found Matt Hills to be a good example of that, whereas I don't think Donna Haraway is. Of course, I suppose she'd say that my emphasis on control shows my masculinist/scientific/modernist biases, so there you are. And maybe I need to distinguish between theory and jargon; it is possible to discuss commodity fetishism, for example, for people who are reading at college level without losing them in a forest of terminology that ends up sparking more resentment than understanding. It's even possible to do that with Foucault, though I'm not so sure about Judith Butler.
That's a great explanation of the problems with the journal assignment. My thoughts were more selfish, but your points about the risks to the student and the project of teaching are even more important.
Academia ... it's funny because my husband just got a tenure-track job in the humanities, after several years of adjuncting, and now he at least can be fairly sure that his low salary will be forthcoming next year. Whereas as a lawyer, I am compensated at a rate that ought to make any fair-minded person sick. So the gender dynamics are very much reversed, which I think makes a difference even in a feminist relationship.
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