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This essay interrogates the concept of "clarity" that has become an imperative of effective student writing. I show that clarity is neither axiomatic nor transparent, and that the clear/unclear binary that informs the identification of clarity as a goal of effective student writing is itself unstable precisely because of the ideological baggage that undergirds its construction. I make this argument by finding the traces of composition's insistence on student writers' clarity in the attacks on the writing of critical theorists.
I
My goal in this essay is to interrogate the concept of "clarity" that has become a discursive sine qua non of effective student writing. The virtues of clarity are routinely expounded or assumed in composition handbooks, rubrics used to evaluate student writing, the everyday informal interactions of writing instructors with their students and with each other, the stated philosophies of many college composition programs in the United States, and the course descriptions and expectations of other college faculty (including faculty who work with graduate students). I take issue with the reigning taken-for-grantedness of clarity's virtues by analyzing the ways in which assumptions about clarity's obviousness, objectivity, and innocuousness in fact conceal the ideological work that is done in the name of clarity, and by examining the ramifications for composition studies of the values embedded in this insistence on clarity.
I have no doubt that various kinds of writing have their place, and that each has drawbacks and advantages. In what follows, then, my primary intent is not to defend or excoriate writing that is constructed as "clear" or writing that is demonized as "unclear," but rather to unpack the values that "clarity" implicitly champions and abjures. I hope to show that "clarity" is neither axiomatic nor transparent, and that the clear/unclear binary that informs the positing of clarity as a goal of effective student writing is itself unstable precisely because of the ideological baggage that undergirds its construction. I make this argument by finding the traces of composition's insistence on student writers' clarity in the attacks on the writing styles of critical theorists-attacks that present a resistance to the politics of critical theory as a critique of purple prose.
II
The description of the first-year composition course at my own institution explains that...