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by sctb
769 days ago
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This is about as bog standard as it gets for academic language in the humanities. For example: > But neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts. These acts are indeed passive, relative to the active counterpart of writing or speaking. A basic academic move is to reframe a concept in a more abstract, generalized, and artificial context, within which you can argue pretty much anything. The more insane and counterintuitive the argument sounds, the more stylish and impactful it's perceived to be. "Understudied" means that no-one has yet marketed this particular flavour combination of intellectual schlock. They're not actually talking about your lurking practices. |
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The idea that reading is not passive is not at all original. After all, authors are not “active” (and often do not exist), and books can't read themselves. A reader's head is needed for anything at all to happen, and that's the only “active” part at a given moment. There's enough words written about what's happening on the receiving side, the mirror of someone's “creative process”.
So called “passive consumption” should be defined as repetition of the usual, unchallenging, satisfying work (as opposed to trying hard to understand something). I have no idea what the book is about, but it must better be critical to a swindling which turns human beings into “dumb masses” instead of being based on it.
Also, there's mechanical reproduction side to it. Recorded music might be inferior to a concert in some ways, same with printed pictures and photos. But written text is also only a 2D projection of a conversation or performance. Many thinkers in human history wrote very little, and even actively disdained written accounts of their words. This is how that active-passive rift can be bridged.