A pretentious wordsmith at work:
What was written in prescribed form and in the archive’s margins, what was written oblique to official prescriptions and on the ragged edges of protocol produced the administrative apparatus as it opened to a space that extended beyond it. Contrapuntal intrusions emanated from outside the corridors of governance but they also erupted – and were centrally located – within that sequestered space. Against the sober formulaics of officialese, these archives register the febrile movements of persons off balance – of thoughts and feelings in an out of place. In tone and temper they convey the rough interior ridges of governance and disruptions to the deceptive clarity of its mandates.
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009), pp. 1-2. (ht cp)
12 March, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Would it be presumptuous or unkind of me to suggest that this is utter pretentious bollocks?
12 March, 2012 at 10:02 pm
You are too kind.
13 March, 2012 at 3:42 am
A Thesaurus, my kingdom for a Thesaurus!
13 March, 2012 at 3:57 am
Yes, shift+f7: a glossary, my demesne for a glossary.
13 March, 2012 at 5:21 am
The English satirical magazine Private Eye has a section called Pseud’s Corner, which has for decades featured the most fatuous examples of wordsmithing. Readers send in the entries, if you sent this one in, it’ll have a pretty good chance of being accepted, I think.