Haack on Roll-Hansen on Haack on Feminism

In her newest book, responding to Roll-Hansen (who critiques her stern stance against feminist epistemology), Susan Haack writes:

I admit that I was tempted to write, "the appropriate response to such silly gender-feminist propaganda...," so perhaps I should comment briefly on Roll-Hansen's criticism that my tone may be "too sharp." Having no taste for the chewy blandness of much contemporary academic prose, I do my best to be as forthright and plain-spoken as possible; and perhaps, to ears accustomed to the shameless mutual flattery in which members of this or that academic clique now routinely indulge, the forthright and plain-spoken sounds "too sharp." It's ironic, really, given that irresponsibly exaggerated denigration of truly remarkable minds is apparently regarded as perfectly OK: as with Sandra Harding's suggestion that Newton's Principa could be properly described as a "rape manual," or Richard Rorty's dismissal of Peirce as a "whacked-out triadomaniac." In any case, I suspect that what most enrages some people is less my tone than my annoying habit of quoting what they actually said and then trying to clear up any convenient ambiguities--and, no doubt, my constitutional inability to take the more grotesque recent forms of academic pretentiousness as seriously as their proponents think they deserve. But I won't apologize for my sense of humor, since without it I would surely have given up long ago!

("Scrutinizing Science Studies" 2007. A Lady of Distinctions: Susan Haack Responds to her Critics. Cornelis de Waal (Ed.) Amherst: Prometheus Books.)

Haack inherited more from Peirce than philosophical notions. =D