Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The words get longer (and longer)

If you can’t read, this course isn’t for you. Some of these essays we have to devour are turning my guts inside out.

Take these two concluding sentences from David Campbell's Salgado and the Sahel, an essay on images of famine.

"Photographs are a modality of power, and the bulk of contemporary famine images conform to colonial economies of representation. In contrast to the depoliticization of disasters through such pictures, Salgado's compartment vis-a-vis his subject’s functions as an ethical and responsibilizing practice in which the aesthetic repoliticizes, making it possible to envisage a humanitarian ethos."

Interesting essay, though I'm not really sure what it is it's concluding. Perhaps someone should right on essay on understanding this essay. I feel this is a subject I shall return to.

So there you go, 54 words. I feel I should declare that I am a sub for the Daily Star in my day job. I can confidently say that at least 15 of these words would be substituted before the passage got anywhere near print. Even then it would be far too complex.

Like I said before, the Plain English Group would have a field day.

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