Well, I Guess I Rather Asked For That, Didn't I: Review of A Stubborn Fury

The journal Postdigital Science and Education has published an appropriately disrespectful review of A Stubborn Fury by Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns & Sandra Sinfield: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-022-00357-6.

Here are two excerpts from the review, one from the beginning and one from the end:

'A Stubborn Fury offers a lot of food for thought, both in terms of its content and
presentation of arguments. Thus, this review engages with Hall’s arguments, chapter
by chapter. In keeping with Hall’s writing approach and style, we embrace the ellipti-
cal and the poetical, the pulse, and the repeat. We hope that our remnants and refrain
capture Hall’s project in spirit to pique the reader’s curiosity. We draw a tentative
conclusion of how this book, in its unique style, may mobilise "the medium of writing
as a mode of critical enquiry and aesthetic expression". Reach out and read this—it is
the most readable piece of theory on theory through writing that you will meet.'

'Reading this was emotionally uncomfortable—and perhaps that was the point...
Reading A Stubborn Fury, while at times unsettling, is exciting and pacey—especially
to those who have struggled to read French theory. Yet, we are left feeling unclean—as if
we have engaged in a public stoning. Is this useful? What can we now do? "[T]here is no
water" (Eliot 2020), just the bitty bits of scar tissue.'

Yesterday, in a brief post-review exchange with Abegglen, Burns & Sinfield, I mentioned I had recently come across the following passage in B.S. Johnson's introduction to Aren’t You Rather Young To Be Writing Your Memoirs?: ‘I am always sceptical about writers who claim to be writing for an identifiable public. How many letters and phone calls do they receive from this public that they know it so well as to write for it. Precious few in my experience, when I have questioned them about it.’ It struck me because, as A Stubborn Fury indicates, I find it ironic that in Britain we have a largely private school and Oxbridge-educated section of society (journalists, media commentators etc.) who regularly scold contemporary theorists for using supposedly difficult language, on the grounds that it is this elite-educated section of society themselves who know best what the public can and cannot understand.

Johnson's lines came back to me when reading Abegglen, Burns & Sinfield's review. I'm not sure who it is books such as A Stubborn Fury are written for. This is a different spin on their line: 'We are not really sure who is "saying" this.' In this respect, a still further provocation would be: 'We are not really sure who is "reading" this.' Nevertheless, I'm grateful to them for joining me in the imagined collective of those who are impolite enough to want to perform writing and reading differently.