Judith Butler claims that with the use of demanding language one can challenge ‘common sense’ by seeking alternative perspectives. She notes that some of the most controversial matters such as sexuality, race, and capitalism are approached in a difficult prose. Through this medium, it is possible to question the similar notions that makes common sense and along the way coming to explore different view points. An example of a belief regarded as common sense is for white people to own slaves. Such ideology was only a popular sensation but not common among everyone. When common sense maintains a social status that is unfair then it is only right to attempt to change that common sense into other possibilities. Philosophers from the Frankfurt Academy in Germany has demonstrated how language can shape one’s manner of perceiving reality. It interrupts the same beliefs that one carries by interpreting new ones. To conclude, Butler insists that the use of obscure language is not to cause confusion by selecting “unlovely words” but to analyze and consider new views so we can alter, in a positive manner, the way we live in.
Synthesis
According to Butler, common sense can be disputed with the use of demanding language. One can not introduce a complex argument without the use of, also, complex language. When topics arouse that are typically difficult to explain intensive language needs to be present. “If what he says could be said in terms of ordinary language he would probably have done so in the first place.” From this quote I presume that Marcuse intends to say that if a notion is well understood and accepted then it can be explained without complicated terms, but in cases were social ideologies are viewed in different ways, then it becomes a challenge to discern. Using demanding language can lead to interpretations that before were not present. Language can show us different alternatives and new perspectives. When using ordinary language, it limits the possibility of visualizing other notions. Ordinary language states, I presume, exactly what it states--a literal context. The purpose is not to engage in the clarification of good or bad writing but to learn the mode of demanding language. “Rather, we have an intellectual disagreement about what kind of world we want to live in, and what intellectual resources we must preserve as we make our way toward the politically new.” Bad writing is not that bad after all since it offers an ontological view.