I May Shit, But Do I Bullshit?

       In a direct response to the essay “A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing?” by Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer, I ask myself this question: do I bullshit?  I myself am an English major and so I relate myself to the Academia and look forward to a future surrounded in this.  But is this future one of total bullshit?  My immediate response to this accusation is to naturally refute and refuse it completely.  How could I agree that what I base my life around, pay 50,000 dollars a year to learn at college, and waste precious hours studying, is all bullshit?  No, no, of course I reject it—it would be mad to agree to this.  However, I know what we do in English, and how writers twist words, is sometimes stretching the truth.  Could it be true: are we all just bullshitters?

       Now, I feel that the term “bullshit” is harsh, and was probably chosen to grab greater attention from the reader.  And while at first I chuckled, as the pages went on, I grew more and more uncomfortable.  Was it because the term is crude or because I was realizing the falsity of English academia?  Well, I cannot be sure exactly, but I feel like it was a bit of both.  The term “bullshit” seems to pull out a greater reaction from the reader, but also seems a bit outlandish.  When the authors bring up Dave Barry’s accusation of the “bullshit” of Moby Dick and the similarities the whale has to the Republic of Ireland, he seems to criticize writers: “If you can regularly come up with lunatic interpretations of simple stories, you should major in English” (373).

       But that seems to be part of the beauty in English; there is no exact answer to each piece of writing.  There are words and lines, but no exact meanings of readings.  Scholars thus write to explain, criticize, or argue points and speak amongst each other.  In one piece of this article, he states: “Their goal is to sell the product, yet they are required to present themselves as benefactors of their potential customers, as persons with only the good of the client at heart” (378).  So in a ways, that makes the writer a salesperson—but can you claim that they are a “bullshitter?”  What if they truly believe in their position (which hopefully they do, putting so much passion and work into a piece)?  They would not claim themselves as a “bullshitter,” and that is no doubt another reason why scholars take great offense to this claim.

       All too often, non-scholars place critical writing in the “bullshit” pile, simply because they do not understand this way of writing.  “For many non-academics, academic writing is not just bullshit but bullshit of the worst kind” (381).  It is not that they are misunderstanding the writing of academia that bothers scholars, but the fact that they toss out this hard work and claim it to be “bullshit.”  I believe that one quote speaks incredibly true of the thoughts of those outside the English academia; the normal reader would read something on, let’s say, Wuthering Heights and recount that: “Such jargon seems to contribute nothing to the reader except confusion” (381).  To them, and some academia, this essay would be bullshit.  It makes no sense, and seems far-fetched and insignificant.  But does that make it bullshit?  Does the author believe it to be bullshit?

       While the article does well in grabbing its reader in with the term “bullshit”, I feel that these authors overuse the term.  And while it is insulting to authors who spend their lives in this business, I feel like it is too negative towards the practice of writing.  Authors work incredibly hard to add essays into discussion, and while their point may be far-fetched and “bullshitted," those of the English Academia are not the only people supposedly “bullshitting."  I would classify most people to be guilty of bullshitting in their life—lawyers, business men and women, actors, salesmen, waiters, doctors, and I could list many more.