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one of the best classes i took in college was 'the little red schoolhouse' that focuses on academic/profesh writing.
i learned a ton & one of the best lessons was: get rid of nominalizations (nouns derived from verbs, eg 'privatization' is the nominalization of 'to privatize')
i learned a ton & one of the best lessons was: get rid of nominalizations (nouns derived from verbs, eg 'privatization' is the nominalization of 'to privatize')
this is generally good advice for making your writing more readable because the human brain thinks in terms of people doing things, not processes.
and in thinking about racial injustice, there's also a *substantive* reason why nominalization is often a problem.
and in thinking about racial injustice, there's also a *substantive* reason why nominalization is often a problem.
(btw, this is not a novel insight by *any* means, but the connection to LRS was something that came back to me today)
for eg, i'm reading a book where it says that for racial progress, we need more "cooperation & collaboration-- & less domination."
here's the problem: i can't locate any subjects anywhere. who is collaborating & compromising with whom? who needs to stop dominating whom?
here's the problem: i can't locate any subjects anywhere. who is collaborating & compromising with whom? who needs to stop dominating whom?
given what the book is about, it's easy to infer that the author means that white americans need to cooperate & collaborate w/ black americans, and not seek to dominate them. this is literally the only way to make sense of progress towards racial equality.
but because of nominalizations, the words are reduced to vague processes that just *happen* instead of subjects who are doing things with or to other subjects. in other words: nominalizations desiccate relations of power from the world.
this isn't to say that nominalizations are always bad! but when you're talking about relations of power-- as you inevitably do when you are talking about racism-- it's important not to obscure them.
and i know this isn't news to anyone, but let's just say that i'm still seeing this in reputable, scholarly books published in 2019. so if it's an obvious mistake, well, people are still making it.
