ABSTRACT
Clarity is a hallmark ideal of academic writing. Today clarity is ascribed positive value as normatively designating the good way of communicating knowledge but perhaps because of its central position it is often taken for granted. In this chapter, I unfold a questioning of the ideal of clarity. While it is easy to be blinded by the virtues of clarity, it is crucial to explore what may be lurking in the shadows of this self-given ideal, because in our praise of the virtues of clarity we may overlook the limitations it imposes on research. This chapter undoes clarity as a taken for granted ideal and opens a questioning into what the ideal of clarity pertains to and its potential consequences for research and thinking within contemporary academia. Furthermore, the chapter sketches out Rancière’s poetics of knowledge as a fruitful conceptual background for the exploration of the poetics of clarity and briefly presents the methodology and empirical material. Finally, the chapter deals with the reflexivity of writing about writing.
