Sociologist Kieran Healy Tells Nuance to Go to Hell
Fuck Nuance (2015)
Kieran Healy argues that sociology's endless demand for "nuance" is often rhetorical blackmail rather than genuine insight. A subtler distinction isn't automatically a more significant one, yet anyone can invoke nuance to dodge a clear argument. He maps the traps this habit sets for theory and explains why he titled his ASA paper "Fuck Nuance."
The fact that a distinction is more subtle or fine-grained does not make it automatically more significant, so the demand for nuance is a form of rhetorical blackmail, always available to anyone for any reason.