baubles of my mind's eye

(Source: fuckyeahsociologystudentsheep)

Willful Disobedience (via feraldreamer)

(Source: f-e-r-a-l)

sociopoliticaldribble:

Look it’s life explained in 4 boxes

(via iwillnotshavemyvagina)

—shadowofthebridge

I think it’s part of a very “us vs. them” dynamic that this book adopts without explicitly owning up to doing it.  I don’t think that academic jargon is fundamentally unclear; but I do think the worst of academics use it to obfuscate and exclude people, or even worse, to argue OVER people instead of talk to them.  Or to say absolutely nothing at all.

Orwell made this point better: “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”

: pcquotes:

Continuing the “words-have-meaning” theme this morning. I am a big fan of words, beautiful specific words that say exactly the right thing. Of all the types of writing I do and have done in my life, the best type of writing for wordies is music criticism. You have to come up with exactly the right one or your review is meaningless to anyone who might be trying to discern whether this band is something they’d like. Or it’s just wankery. (A lot of music crit is in fact just wankery. Just go read Lester Bangs and Ellen Willis and see how the shit’s really done.) 

Academic jargon is often the opposite. It’s designed to make you sound smart at the expense of actually being understood. I think sometimes that’s in itself a defense mechanism. If your work is deliberately really, really difficult to pick apart, then if someone tries to refute your point you simply say “That is not what I meant at all” (ten points if you get the reference). 

Last night at the same party at which I discussed the slippery meaning of the word “socialism” these days, I wound up on my “populist-looks-at-great-books” rant, talking about the class analysis in The Great Gatsby with some guy I just met. And it’s all related. If we’re swathing ideas and literature in big words for their own sake rather than the RIGHT words, the words that make people WANT to dive in and roll around in it. I want my theoretical, my critical, my political writing to be beautiful. 

(Some of the right words for Gatsby: sparkling, poignant, incisive, glittery, lingering, and yes, even the overused “brilliant” but in reference to the way a diamond is brilliant, throwing light in different directions all around.)

It’s not just simplicity and clarity—it’s making it appealing to people so they want to read it. It’s a different kind of standard of excellence. The right words. Not big words for their own sake, but the right words. They matter. 

(via champagnecandy)

” The purpose of a revolutionary is to make revolution delicious”

I think that is the point of a writer as well. In my own over educated mind I find that when I hear people declare a disdain for clarity and simplicity , it is a deep demand to not have to relinquish the smoke screen of inaccountability. If no one can understand what you say , no one can hold you responsible for what you say .

Good writing, good art, good media comes in varying levels and varying degrees of decoration.  Baroque frippery is perfectly legitimate ( I like opera) but the underpinning even in teh highest of high art is a deep and incisive need to CONVEY something .Theory is no different

Theory is meant to describe and DECONSTRUCT prevailing phenomena into parts or all of a cohesive unit, not to render it so incomprehensible you need MORE theory to analyze it.  Theory should be additive not subtractive.

Especially in literary and social science dialogues, there is a desire to continually bind into a box the dialogues that are meant to illuminate the conditions of the world.

WHich often leads me to believe that teh tactic isn’t so much to be condescending but to hide the fact that when a theory isn’t conveyable , it’s usually failed

(via blackamazon)

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done round here.

And that, my friends, is how company policies are made.

Forgive me if this isn’t an exact analogue. It just seems a good way to get the gist of the idea across to people not familiar with the vital concept of social constructivism. Which seems to be 99% of the general population, if one’s wondering how wonderful our educational system is :-)

Case Studies of Decline: Vital information in easy-to-digest visual form with cute stick figures.

“[Science’s objection to interdisciplinarity] is underlain by a narrow conception of science as mere technical intelligence and problem-solving expertise stripped of its philosophical, historical, social, and ethical meaning. Such an interpretation of science, today the prevailing one, is directed toward a blind mastery of the world without questioning ends. It is indeed intimately tied to that dangerous fragmentation of human knowledge that interdisciplinarity seeks to challenge.”

~ Vincent Kavaloski

Title is a quote of Diana M.L. Relke in Feminist Pedagogy and the Integration of Knowledge: Towards a More Interdisciplinary University.

If, perchance, you’re interested in exploring the philosophical implications of science’s ‘blind quest to master the world’ (to paraphrase, obviously), I highly recommend finding a copy of Where the Wasteland Ends. Lotsa good thoughts regarding the root assumptions of much of Western civilization/culture/thought and how it relates to, among other things, our growing ecological crisis.