« Discovery Of Natural Tumor Suppressor Variants Could Lead to New Therapies For Diabetes, Heart Disease | Main | Dear Mr. Bush - Why Can't We 'Send Them Home' »

April 10, 2007

Peddling Stupidity - The Postmodern Scholarship Of A 'Radical Cyber-feminist'

Topics: Political News and commentaries

I'm often amazed at the trash and dressed-up, empty thought processes that are passed off as scholarship on Western university campuses and force fed to young vulnerable minds. Take for example the "work" (as in reeeeeal piece of work) by the psychobabble-laden, pseudo-intellectual Carolyn G. Guertin, a Senior McLuhan Fellow in the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. Fortunately for me, David Thompson stumbled upon her dribble before I did, so I've been saved the labor, time, and frustration of truly riping her a new one in a manner that she truly deserves.

Here's a few excerpts of Thompson on Guertin's "scholarship" (sic):

Thanks to the blogging psychoanalyst, Shrinkwrapped, I came across a doctoral dissertation called, rather implausibly, Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: the Archival Text, Digital Narrative and the Limits of Memory. The work in question, by "radical cyber-feminist" Carolyn G. Guertin, is apparently the basis of a forthcoming book of the same name. Faced with such an imposing title, one can practically hear the boundaries of human knowledge squealing as they expand. Naturally, I had to find out more.

On visiting Guertin's website, I discovered that the author is a Senior McLuhan Fellow in the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. As a "scholar of women's art and literature and new media arts," Dr Guertin also shapes young minds at the Universities of Athabasca and Guelph, Canada, and is a frequent guest speaker at conferences and events across Europe. Her works, I learned, have been published "in print, online and in real space."

... Space crops up quite a bit in Guertin's dissertation, as do various mathematical, quantum mechanical and geometric terms, the bulk of which are misused in a series of strained and incoherent metaphors. In keeping with many purveyors of postmodern theorising, Guertin has been careful to appropriate fragments of scientific terminology that sound fashionable and exciting, and uses them with no apparent regard for their meaning or relevance. (Entanglement and Hilbert Space are mentioned casually, with no explanation, and for no discernible reason.) Consequently, it's difficult to fathom the author's supposed intention, or to determine exactly how far short of that objective her efforts have fallen. Instead, we're presented with what amounts to a collage of grandiose jargon, habitual non sequitur and unrelated subject matter - including feminism, web browsing and space-time curvature - bolted together by little more than chutzpah:...

... Postmodern prose is perhaps best approached as an exercise in posturing and phonetics - of couching slim and trite observations in needlessly Byzantine language; or as what Sokal and Bricmont refer to as "a gradual crescendo of nonsense." Efforts to fathom deep meaning, or, very often, meaning of any kind, are generally exhausting and rarely rewarded. More often, what you'll find is essentially a pile of language, carefully disorganised so as to obscure a lack of content.

Read it all, and be grimly amuzed.

Posted by Richard at April 10, 2007 6:13 AM

Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:

• The Truth About Tuskegee And The Lie Of Black Left-wing Paranoia - May 02, 2008
• Bad News (For Democrats): Jobless Rate Falls - May 02, 2008
• Here We Go Again: Meet Obama's ''New'' Pastor - May 02, 2008
• Contrary To What Democrats And Jeremiah Wright Want Americans To Believe - May 02, 2008
• Accepting Michelle's Invitation - May 01, 2008
• On 'Wright's Wrong' And Obama's Response - May 01, 2008
• Despite Claims To The Contrary, Obama 'Did Inhale' - May 01, 2008
• The Party of Defeat - Apr 30, 2008
• Obama Counsels With New Radical Minister - Apr 30, 2008
• Obama Runs Grandmother Under The Bus, Then Runs Rev. Wright Under The Bus, Who In Turn Ran Obama Under The Bus, Who Then Ran The Bus Over The Reverend - Oh My, What A Mess! - Apr 30, 2008