The profitability of outrage”

Niti Bhan writes about how she presents her work:

There are those who would nudge me to write about my work in a political manner, ideally, in their eyes, taking a strident and vocal approach of rebellious and seditious activism. This is perceived as the means to promote one’s work, rather than letting it speak for itself. An example is a course I took in the Spring related to the dissemination of doctoral research where the lecturer’s recommendations on how to position one’s work in social media were based on answering questions such as ‘what makes me angry?’ – it was clear the profitability of outrage had made its way to academia.

Comments

vbj's picture
vbj on July 8, 2021 - 12:36 Permalink

Ugh. Outrage only serves to alienate those who might otherwise listen.

Ton Zijlstra's picture
Ton Zijlstra on July 8, 2021 - 16:23 Permalink

Niti Bhan's blog is well worth following, and has been for over 15 years.

Oliver (FS)'s picture
Oliver (FS) on July 9, 2021 - 18:39 Permalink

There are some nuances to this. No writing of more than a short sentence or two speaks for itself. Books, essays and articles have titles and headlines, and which I think most readers consciously or otherwise understand to be a kind of marketing. To me that means it's OK to tweak what you're about to anger people with a headline. Meanwhile, academic writing is notorious for tending to be obscure, and academics are notorious for not wanting the titles and book jackets or to speak at appearances as their agents and publishers believe would get their work read by the most people. So I imagine this kind of egging on of academics is as old as Athens