Abstract

There has been a backlash against academic writing in the humanities that can be found in popular culture at least since the 1990s. By considering a selection of arguments from critics of academic writing in the humanities, I then defend a certain kind of ‘obscurity’ or ‘difficulty’ in scholarly prose by developing a concise genealogy of obscure academic writing. This paper develops the notion that an ‘uncommon sense’ should be situated against ‘common sense’ to unveil an assumed ‘world’ or ‘reality’ alongside the structural formations of that which is considered ‘useful’ language. Often, complicated academic language grapples with the intrinsic complexity that is hidden behind ‘simple’ ideas.