On Not Writing Accessibly - with David Graeber and Rebecca Solnit

In an extract from her foreword to David Graeber’s new collection, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, Rebecca Solnit writes that Graeber:

wanted to put [ideas] in everyone’s hands … Which is part of why he worked hard at – and succeeded in – writing in a style that … was always as clear and accessible as possible, given the material. Egalitarianism is a prose style, too.

…. A sentence Lyndsey Stonebridge wrote about Hannah Arendt could apply equally well to him: 'To fixate on her exceptional mind is to miss something that is important about her lessons in thinking: thinking is ordinary, she teaches; that is its secret power.'

Yet isn’t this itself an example of not thinking, and instead of merely going along with received knowledge, with 'widely shared assumptions'? As is pointed out in the Robot Review of Books #11, which looks at Feeding the Machine by James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant, advocating for accessible writing is far from neutral; it’s often wielded by journalists and others to criticize certain works as too academic or overly intellectual. Here, "'accessible' and academic”’ are  shorthand for '“good” and “bad'", as Rachael Allen, poetry editor at Granta, observes.

What’s needed, to quote feminist sociologist Rachelle Chadwick, is a certain ‘epistemic generosity’ and openness to different ideas, positions, and problems, as well as to ‘difficulty and friction’. Such a different form of critical engagement requires ‘a commitment to thinking rather than the easy repetition of accepted ideas (which often reproduce privilege) or a stubborn and defensive clinging to unexamined attachments and assumptions. Privileged persons are unfortunately prone to the latter. Comfortable social positions (and the desire to maintain them) often breed "willful ignorance".'

Besides, if they were really serious about placing their ideas in everyone’s hands, wouldn’t these thinkers make their books available on a free/libre basis, instead of selling them for £25/£10.99 each? ('It does not have to be this way', indeed. We don't have to accept it. This is only one way of doing things. There are others. This, too, can be made differently; these assumptions and values changed.)

Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the liberalism of Graeber, Solnit et al., far from being the solution to, say, the illiberalism of Trump, Badenoch et al., is actually part of the problem.