Folk can be accused of anti intellectualism, in appealing for clarity in the myriad of analytical literature that seems designed to impress academic peers, rather than create clarity and usable knowledge for those who need it.
There are things we should be able to talk about in a sensible and understandable language, without having to rely on experts, especially those things that can be made to look complicated for other reasons. Protecting substantive discourse is not anti intellectualism, it is about ensuring people understand and can make sensible decisions for themselves in areas that affect them.
There are many things to learn that are worth learning and there are areas where some work and research are needed. But this shouldn’t be confuse with the general conversation that helps inclusion in decisions and aspects of our lives that anybody can learn and find out about.
… Academics have become “lost in language games in which the ‘real’ is just another discourse”. Indeed so fascinated have some social scientist become with the relativistic and self-referential vacuities of post-modernism they completely ignore any reference to human agency, to the role citizens might play in changing the World in which they find themselves. This self-insulating is compounded by the readiness of academics to retreat into private languages, to take refuge in an obscurity that “secures the status of the author ” and, in some cases, disguises the “slightness of their contribution to public debate ”. (book review) Laurie Taylor