During my tenure as a professor, when postmodernism was reaching the peak of its influence, I frequently encountered the phrase "to problematize" in the work of my colleagues and students as evidence that something had been accomplished. In recent weeks, reading and listening to Tara Henley’s podcast Lean Out, I noted that “to problematize” was being displaced by the more accessible, everyday verb “to complicate.”
In today’s world, individuals have access to overwhelming levels of complexity: conflicts and contradictions, information and misinformation, opinions and counter-opinions, along with an absence of coherent dialogue. Not surprisingly, everyone just wants to have the feeling that they are right, and tahell with the details. Everywhere I look I see the media playing to that polarizing desire with brainwashing repetition. Hence my admiration for Tara Henley’s willingness “to complicate” the issues, exposing some of the inconvenient details.
I share in her ambitions at my amateur, hobbyist level, but I do have a problem. Henley’s podcast is largely based on interviews. The dialogue format overcomes some of the shortcomings of univocal editorializing. Although I never intended it to be, thesourgrapevine.com is a solo act. I have read the dominant narratives against the grain, suggested resistant readings, problematized, and exercised all the academic verbiage of my former profession, but I am happy to say, more simply, that I have complicated the simplistic narratives, cognitive biases and polarizations that seem to dominate the media.
That said, while I may intend to complicate what I, perforce, end up doing is simplifying or vulgarizing. I try to introduce the details and perspectives which remain un-promulgated. I read the boring stuff that most readers don’t have the time or inclination to read. But in the end, I have to simplify if I want to be read—and I do want to be read.
