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Sunday, May 15, 2005
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ACADEMIA FISKED The controversial Independent writer, Robert Fisk, attacks ugly empty academic jargon in a recent column, and UD applauds him for it. He’s right to suggest that the “secret language of academe” functions to “mystify [one’s] discipline” (the disciplines at issue here are the social sciences and the humanities) and exclude those outside the guild. He’s also right that 'it is about snobbishness. I recall a lady professor at George Mason University, complaining that ‘most people’ - she was referring to truck drivers, Amtrak crews, bellhops and anyone else who didn’t oppose the Iraq war - ‘had so little information.’ Well, I wasn’t surprised. University teachers - especially in the States - are great at networking each other but hopeless at communicating with most of the rest of the world, including those who collect their rubbish, deliver their laundry and serve up their hash browns.' Sharon Howard (of Early Modern Notes) culls from Fisk’s essay some of the jargon to which he objects: matrilineal emic etic metaphorical constructs fundamental dialogic immediacy prosocial tendences exilic spirituality interplay political and mythic interdependencies othering ubiquitous human psychological process of othering problematize meaning system elite paradoxicality cognitive dissonance dialogic injuries cultural envelope family psychodynamics social intercourse Although Howard and her commenters believe that Fisk is terribly wrong about all of this, UD agrees with Fisk that these are very stinky words and phrases, exhibiting a windy vacancy of the sort George Orwell famously complained about (“fundamental dialogic immediacy“), or a pomposity that’s to puke for (“exilic spirituality,” “dialogic injuries“), or a species of psychobabble so notorious as to have become a joke phrase in the larger culture (“cognitive dissonance”). In response to his frontal attack on their language, a group of academics at a recent conference Fisk attended beat the shit out of him (this photo shows Fisk at Mass General immediately after the attack). (J.K.: This is a photo of Fisk, but it was taken after a group of Afghans beat the shit out of him.) |
