Building a Better Description

Abstract

Universally practiced across the disciplines, description is also consistently devalued or overlooked. In this introduction to the special issue “Description Across Disciplines,” Sharon Marcus, Heather Love, and Stephen Best propose that description is a critical practice more complex (and less contradictory) than its detractors have taken it to be. They argue that turning critical attention toward description’s nuances gives us access to the ways that scholars conventionally assign and withhold value and prestige. The authors set forth a number of principles (using their contributors’ essays as a guide) toward the end of “building a better description.”

Theoretical suggestions for future research on constructive resistance: strategies of representation of the Japanese civil society

“…As I argue below, descriptions could be understood as a form of constructive resistance. According to, Marcus et al (2016), academics may not always have a clear view of what a 'description' is or what it does, but they know that they do not like it. Descriptions are considered to be: 'Boring and static, rote rather than creative, reconstructive rather than constructive ' (Marcus, Love and Best 2016).…”

“…According to, Marcus et al (2016), academics may not always have a clear view of what a 'description' is or what it does, but they know that they do not like it. Descriptions are considered to be: 'Boring and static, rote rather than creative, reconstructive rather than constructive ' (Marcus, Love and Best 2016). Still, when producing counter-narratives, descriptions can, as I will argue, be important components that mobilise emotions and questions, and rupture silences in regard to, for example, poverty.…”

“…The descriptions in the book evoked interest and made the readers attentive to the new information. According to Marcus et al (2016), describing something as a meaning-generating activity makes things intelligible and turns new phenomena or practices into objects of investigation and knowledge. Thus, descriptions 'connects us to othersto those described, to the makers of what we describe, to other describers' (Marcus et al 2016).…”

“…According to Marcus et al (2016), describing something as a meaning-generating activity makes things intelligible and turns new phenomena or practices into objects of investigation and knowledge. Thus, descriptions 'connects us to othersto those described, to the makers of what we describe, to other describers' (Marcus et al 2016). How descriptions give an insight into the emotions of others is revealed in the interview with the representative of APLA:…”

‘What shall be our new ornaments?’ Description’s orientations

“…67 'Nothing escapes connectedness' might stand as a motto for the current vogue for description, in the latter's seeking to testify to the mode as 'connect[ing] us to others --to those described, to the makers of what we describe, to other describers'. 68 Bersani and Dutoit's 'collaborative ekphrasis', written in a style that invites in its turn a kind of puzzled participation on the part of the reader, is an exemplary forerunner of contemporary ekphrastic practice. And yet its exemplarity is such to preclude extrapolation as paradigm.…”