In Simulacra and Subjectivity, the part that reads “while you cannot acquire a physician’s privileges and social role simply by providing clear evidence of your ability to heal others” was, in an early draft, “physicians are actually nothing but a social class with specific privileges, social roles, and barriers to entry.” These are expressions of the same thought, but the draft version is a direct, simple theoretical assertion, while the latter merely provides evidence for the assertion. I had to be coy on purpose in order to distract the reader from a potential fight.
I want to quibble with this a little bit (and maybe this is that fight you were trying to avoid), but to me the draft version doesn’t seem so direct and simple.
In a sense it’s simple, but if I just read that statement in isolation, it’s less clear to me as a reader what you mean by it. Maybe largely because I’m not sure what you mean by the “nothing but”. If you took out the “nothing but”, I would agree that it’s a clear and direct (and true!) statement. But with the “nothing but” it seems obviously false on many interpretations, so I’m not quite sure how to make sense of it.
In contrast, the “while you cannot acquire...” version seems much clearer to me about what it’s claiming and complaining about.
I want to quibble with this a little bit (and maybe this is that fight you were trying to avoid), but to me the draft version doesn’t seem so direct and simple.
In a sense it’s simple, but if I just read that statement in isolation, it’s less clear to me as a reader what you mean by it. Maybe largely because I’m not sure what you mean by the “nothing but”. If you took out the “nothing but”, I would agree that it’s a clear and direct (and true!) statement. But with the “nothing but” it seems obviously false on many interpretations, so I’m not quite sure how to make sense of it.
In contrast, the “while you cannot acquire...” version seems much clearer to me about what it’s claiming and complaining about.