this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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IMO people use jargon to make their not very smart idea seem smarter. I see it all the time.
The smartest people are ones who can explain things without resorting to a thesaurus. I think of Parenti.
Edit: Since this is gaining controversy, I'll say that I've written, edited, and published many a grad level research paper. Believe me when I say that hiding behind jargon is a really thing that people do, especially in higher education. Reducing unnecessary jargon is also something that many a researcher has been urged to do. This idea isn't original to me, I'm just repeating it here.
Parenti literally used Latifundium in his famous Yellow Parenti lecture though.
Learning words is good.
You can't tell me Parenti isn't much more readable and less jargony than other, more bourgeois historians. Finding the one counter example just feels pedantic af.
Literally no one is arguing this point with you. Have fun with that, though.
I can recall all the words in the OP being used by him, other than Oppobrium (though I’m sure he has used it somewhere). The reason I used Yellow Parenti as an example is because that is the first time I heard of it and I looked it up. I have never heard of it from any source other than
After hearing this for years I was taken aback by the forward to Blackshirts and Reds, followed by relief that the rest of the book wasn’t like that.
I didn't remember that the preface of Blackshirts and Reds was more jargony, but here I am rereading it ATM and I can't argue with that. I'm guessing that he wrote it last and, as his motivation was sapped, put the least amount of effort into rewriting it. Just a guess though.
Honestly I fall into jargon in my field when I'm tired or lazy. Making things make normal sense takes extra effort.
It's not pedantic, he used one of the example words in his most famous lecture. Why?
Were his ideas not clever enough? Is he bourgeoise? Did he change terminology afterwards?
Pedantic as in finding an individual example, ignoring that overall Parenti doesn't put unnecessary jargon in his work, especially compared to someone like Jordan Peterson or even Chomsky. Pedantic as in nitpicking a tiny element and ignoring the wider reality.
Incredibly bad faith questions that I'm not going to answer.
Broadly the discussion has been very absolutist about these terms, I don't really care wether or not Parenti is "better" on a spectrum.
I want to hear what his usage of the term in his most famous lecture actually implies about him and these sorts of terms as a whole. Is this post actually a discussion about language or just a massive circlejerk about how much we dislike academics.
ITT: anti-intellectualism is revolutionary when I like it, but reactionary when I don't
disengage
And for the reverse, overuse of jargon by a newer academic worker is a sure sign of insecurity. These are people that will break if you ask a couple challenging questions. The jargon is a shield. Unfortunately, academia creates the environment where people feel the need to do that, where they cannot be vulnerable and learn because everything is an evaluation of your worth for the "next step", where 20 people compete for the same job and everyone else leaves the field.
Similarly, you can use jargon to make a document unassailable. Not just because it is difficult to parse, but because (1} you can always pivot around your meanings when challenged, and (2) you can embed your work in social goods and therefore characterize disagreement as a social ill of some kind. Declare your work to not just be full of jargon, but also, say, an essentially feminist work, and you can write the absolute silliest things while counting on the absolute support of around 30% of your audience, depending on the field. Of course, this is a double-edged sword, as you now also depend on the cowardice of closeted misogynists and the inefficacy of loud misogynists. To be clear, feminism itself is not a problem, it is a very good thing, but academics quickly learn they can construct unassailable works detached from intellectual merit not just by using jargon to obfuscate, but by embedding it in social contexts that inherently challenge critics. In reactionary audience contexts they do the same thing, equating communism with "bad", praising "fecundity" in white supremacist contexts, getting weird about IQ, etc.
Those words aren't jargon, though.