[TheForge] [OT][OT][OT] RE: was stoopid question, about academia, more beer-chatter)

[Kevin Donahoe]

Yeah, I was going to say that...mumblemumblemumble... NOT!

  >       (Using up my entire  "TheForge [OT]" allotment for 2005 in one
  >       (go.... :-)

Mike, is this throwing yourself upon the (virtual) sword?  and so early in
the year, in incredible quality of future posts is anticipated.

Have you run your Nazel/Chevette lately?

Kevin

  >-----Original Message-----
  >From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
  >[mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of Mike Spencer
  >Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 5:34 PM
  >To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
  >Subject: [TheForge] [OT][OT][OT] RE: was stoopid question,about
  >academia, more beer-chatter)
  >
  >
  >
  >Bob quoth:
  >
  >>>  hiding behind their foucault.
  >>
  >> what does that mean?
  >
  >       (Using up my entire  "TheForge [OT]" allotment for 2005 in one
  >       (go.... :-)
  >
  >
  >Summary: The post-modernist equivalent of "fake it", "punt" or
  >         "hand-waving".
  >
  >
  >Once upon a time, there were some very bright French Guys, of whom
  >Michel Foucault was one.  These French Guys wanted to say:
  >
  >   Before you put it in your mouth, look at exactly what's on the end
  >   of your fork.
  >
  >Any blacksmith could have understood that.  Instead, they said/wrote a
  >vast bunch or incredibly abstruse stuff in highly academic French.
  >That stuff was translated into even more abstruse English.  Mediocre
  >English-speaking academics fell in love with these billows of
  >incomprehensible verbiage and began to cut and paste words and even
  >whole chunks of it into their own writing and lectures.
  >
  >Soon, doing this became almost mandatory in many liberal arts venues.
  >
  >By 1996, it was possible to write whole, lengthy academic papers
  >comprised of (more or less) random chunks of this jargon, pasted
  >together (more or less) grammatically and have them accepted by
  >journals as serious academic research.  [1]
  >
  >Any person accomplished in this jargon domain, can, when asked some
  >question, spew endless strings of this stuff, completely burying and
  >obfuscating the vacuity of the speaker's mind.  Although typically
  >content-free and semantically empty, it is not permitted to say so (in
  >the post-modern academic context) without loss of face.
  >
  >Transformatively yours [2],
  >
  >- Imafa Kinasso, Ph.D., FRCSVAT [5][6]
  >
  >---------
  >
  >[1] See:
  >
  >  http://ca.dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Cultural_Studies/Sokal_Hoax/
  >
  >    Full text:
  >
  >       "Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a transformative
  >       hermeneutics of quantum gravity" -- Alan Sokal, Social Text,
  >       1996
  >
  >
  >http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2.html
  >
  >
  >[2]  The discourse of the blacksmiting community, for all its
  >     undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological
  >     status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating
  >     from dissident or marginalized communities. [3]
  >
  >[3]  This stuff has to have lots of footnotes.  It doesn't matter what
  >     they say. [4]
  >
  >[4]  Aren't you glad you're a blacksmith?
  >
  >[5]  Imafa Kinasso does not exist.
  >
  >[6]  Fellow of the Royal Canadian Society of Virtual Academic Twits
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