In which Duff & Nonsense almost becomes Duff & Wisdom

Yeeeeees, I know, hard to swallow that title without choking but the, er, 'wisdom' contained on this site only becomes clear when you compare it to what passes for wisdom amongst members of the academy.  For example, take a deep breath and try reading this:

Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal—of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual . . .

The grammarians amongst you, of course, will have spotted that all of that was just a single sentence, or to be precise, part of a single sentence although only God and the original writer know for sure how long it went on.  It was written by the late Professor Roy Bhaskar, founder of the movement known as “Critical Realism.”  No doubt Prof. Bhaskar went to his grave proud of the fact that in 1996 he was the winner of The Bad Writing contest instituted by the late and very great, Dennis Dutton, the founder of what remains my favourite web site Arts & Letters Daily in which essays and articles on all sorts of subjects from a huge variety of magazines and scientific publications are highlighted.

The particular article that took my attention this morning comes from The New Criterion and is headlined "Glaciers and Sex".  It is a litany, although not an exhaustive one, of the utter tripe and balderdash produced by self-styled intellectuals inhabiting, often at our expense, the ivory towers of academe.  The title comes from a recent paper produced by Mark Carey, a dean and professor of history at the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon but before you read an excerpt please pause and offer a prayer on behalf of the tax-payers of Oregon who pay this chump and his cohorts for producing this landfill contribution entitled “Glaciers, gender and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.”  Yeeeees, quite!

To provide you with a flavour of the piece - and I would remind you that spitting is very rude! - here are some excerpts:

“A critical but overlooked aspect of the human dimensions of glaciers and global change research is the relationship between gender and glaciers.” 

“While there has been relatively little research on gender and global environmental change in general, there is even less from a feminist perspective that focuses on gender . . . and also on power, justice, inequality, and knowledge production in the context of ice, glacier change, and glaciology.”

“Feminist theories and critical epistemologies - especially feminist political ecology and feminist postcolonial science studies—open up new perspectives and analyses of the history of glaciological knowledge.”

“Given the prominent place of glaciers both within the social imaginary of climate change and in global environmental change research, a feminist approach has important present-day relevance for understanding the dynamic relationship between people and ice”.

Are you still with me? Good, because Prof. Carey and his co-authors intend to:

“decipher how gender affects the individuals producing glacier-related knowledges,”

“to analyze how power, domination, colonialism [Eh? What?] and control—undergirded by and coincident with masculinist ideologies—have shaped glacier-related sciences,” etc.

"Colonialism"!  Now look here, I know the British Empire is responsible for almost all the ills in this world because that is what the world keeps on and on telling us, but we never mistreated any glaciers as far as I know!  Anyway, I am deeply grateful to The New Criterion (I may well take out a subscription) for reminding me of the well-known fact that that there is no fool like a well-educated fool!

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

A picture is worth a thousand words. He should have published a picture of a glacier looking like a big freezing cock and saved himself a lot of trouble.

[Uncle Mort]

Although I am not an academic, I think that the iconicity of the type seems very disturbing in light of the eloquence of such pieces. I agree/disagree with some of the things being said, but the subaqueous qualities of the cultural motifs notates the substructure of critical thinking. It's time that we became uber-efficient with our regenerated third-generation innovation where exploratory research points to total organisational projections within the cultural exigencies. One may devise a paradigm window to discuss and elucidate holistic organisational paradigm shifts within and without the cultural binding but perhaps it's time to revamp and reboot our systemised expectations.

[David Duff]

And, 'W', as it melted the 'feminastis' would be cheering!

Good effort, Uncle Mort, but, alas, you missed out the words 'feminism' and 'colonialism' so it's off to the re-education camp for you!

[Oswald Thake]

Hmm...a bit simplistic, Uncle. Your conclusions were anticipated by Von Rilke in his "Der Untergang der Kantischen Weltanschauung" (Tübingen: !863) and famously denounced by Professor Karl-Angst von-und-dem Schrecklichkeit-Waikfeld for ontological deviancy before his unfortunate defenestratio at the hands of bimetalists. As any fule kno.
But clear as mud compared to the limpid prose of our genial host!

[David Duff]

Dammit, Sir, there's nothing limp about me, er, at least, there didn't use to be!

[Cuffleyburgers]

Uncle Mort - not bad but you had a full stop, bad boy; and repeated "paradigm" twice.

Actually, pedantising stratospherically, you repeated it once having utilised it precedently.

[David Duff]

Should any of you require more "pedantising stratospherically", Uncle Mort does it with style, wit and some real learning over at his place:
http://akhaart.blogspot.co.uk/

[Whitewall]

Hmm, still more radical Leftism. The ever present defect in democracy.