FAUW Forum Summersummer 2002 2002
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When Scholarship Obfuscates: Methodological Problems with Fan Studies
When Scholarship Obfuscates (Mason) When Scholarship Obfuscates: Methodological Problems with Fan Studies Paul Mason Abstract Fields of study are based on more-or-less arbitrarily defined boundaries, and researchers should be aware of these boundaries and their limitations. The methodologies and rigor of fields of study should also be subject to critique if they are to retain academic relevance. Fan studies exhibits problems with the use of its key terminology, and its scope has also been artificially limited as a result of the preoccupations of the media scholars who were instrumental in its formation. This has led to potentially instructive aspects of the field being almost entirely excluded from consideration, which in turn has led to theory which fails to take account of distinctive characteristics of the excluded aspects. To challenge this vicious circle, more attention should be paid to these areas of fan activity which lie at a remove from the media-dominated mainstream. Keywords: Fandom, fan, consumption, methodology Introduction What concerns me here is the extent to which specific academic agendas have tended to dictate the conceptual shape of fandom within cultural studies. (Hills, 2002, p. 8) Hills’s concern about the “conceptual shape” of fan studies from 17 years ago succinctly expresses an issue to be addressed in the present paper. Any field of study is based on more- or-less arbitrarily defined boundaries. This is necessary for fields of study to exist at all. But the nature of these boundaries needs to be borne in mind, and their validity interrogated, to ensure that the field of study is not merely the covert expression of an academic agenda. -
A.Sokal:Beyond the Hoax
Beyond the Hoax Science, Philosophy and Culture A.Sokal August 21-23, 2008 Alan Sokal achieved notoriety and became a local hero through his hoax perpetrated in the mid-nineties. The hoax consisted in a paper written in current post-modernistic jargon being submitted to a fashionable journal 1 and being accepted. The point of the hoax was to highlight the pretentious writings of social philosophers and the total lack of content and credentials, save that of a sophisticated language and flattery of editors, that go with the activity. The spoof created much more attention in the major news media than he had expected and ever since then he has become an intellectual celebrity with the advantages and possibilities such a position entails. In the book under review, consisting of a collection of partially overlapping essays2, the hoax is reprinted in the first part of the book, along with a lengthy annotation, which takes almost as much space as the main text itself, which, by intention, is more or less unreadable. The writing of the hoax, which involved some non-trivial empirical research3, obviously afforded the author great pleasure, and the point of the lengthy annotation is to point out all the clever in-jokes embedded in the text, a temptation of self-congratulation that should have been resisted, but the difficulty to do so I can very well understand4. The author is disarmingly frank about it, he is very proud of the text, which many of the victims (direct as well as indirect) of the hoax could not really believe was the product of a mere scientist on the other side of the cultural divide. -
What It Is and What It Isn't: Cultural Studies Meets Graduate-Student Labor
What It Is and What It Isn't: Cultural Studies Meets Graduate-Student Labor Toby Miller* This Essay performs two functions. First, it surveys cultural studies. Second, it takes issue with criticisms of cultural studies for being socially irrelevant by pointing to its capacity to galvanize opposition to exploitation even though many of its operating assumptions are awkward for governmental normativity (such as the law) to accept. Cultural studies is a tendency across disciplines, rather than a discipline itself. This is evident in practitioners' simultaneously expressed desires to refuse definition, to insist on differentiation, and to sustain conventional departmental credentials (as well as displaying pyrotechnic, polymathematical capacities for reasoning and research). Cultural studies is animated by subjectivity and power-how human subjects are formed and how they experience cultural and social space. It takes its agenda and mode of analysis from economics, politics, media and communication studies, sociology, literature, education, the law, science and technology studies, anthropology, and history, with a particular focus on gender, race, class, and sexuality in everyday life, commingling textual and social theory under the sign of a commitment to progressive social change. Cultural studies' continuities come from shared concerns and methods: the concern is the reproduction of culture through structural determinations on subjects versus their own agency, and the method is historical materialism.' In this sense, it is vitally connected to issues of collective self-determination, or how social movements gain control over the means of their existence. This link became manifest to me via the significance of cultural studies in the struggles by graduate-student employees at American universities to attain the right to vote for or against unionization, and then through the way in which legal proceedings to determine that struggle excluded certain approaches associated with * Thanks to Marie Leger and the editorial group for their comments. -
The Work of Fredric Jameson
CRITICAL =CHANCE #t 4 : Fall 1983 The Work of Fredric Jameson General Editor's Preface . JAMES J. SOSNOSKI .....................................11 Introduction STEVE NIMIS ........................................... iii Bibliography of Fredric Jameson ............................................. v ItThe Ideological Analysis of Spacet1 FREDRIC JAMESON ........................................ 1 "Does Jameson Have Any Use For Allegory?" CAROL P. JAMES ........................................I 6 "The Jam son Ef feett1 JAMES H. KAVANAUCH ....................................29 'IThe Political Unconscious of Jameson ' s The Political Unconscious" JAMES IFFLAND ..........................................40 "The Marxism Ceconstruction Debate" MICHAEL RYAN ...........................................59 Critical Exchange is published by The Society for Critical Exchange, a not-for-profit corporation organized to encourage "Jameson and the Dialectical Use of CRnre Criticism" cooperative research in criticism and theory. JUNEHOWAARD ............................................ 70 Material published in Critical Exchange is copyrighted by the I1Imagining the Real: Jameson's Use of Lacan" MICHAEL CLARK.. .81 Society with rights re-assigned to authors upon publication. ....................................... For information write: James J. Sosnoski The Society for Critical Exchange "The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology in Spanish P. 0. Box 475 Golden Age Poetry" Oxford, Ohio 45056 JOHN BEE% EY .........................................102 Funding support -
Queer Methods and Methodologies Queer Theories Intersecting and Social Science Research
Queer Methods and Queer Methods and Methodologies Methodologies provides the first systematic consideration of the implications of a queer perspective in the pursuit of social scientific research. This volume grapples with key contemporary questions regarding the methodological implications for social science research undertaken from diverse queer perspectives, and explores the limitations and potentials of queer engagements with social science research techniques and methodologies. With contributors based in the UK, USA, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, this truly Queer Methods international volume will appeal to anyone pursuing research at the and Methodologies intersections between social scientific research and queer perspectives, as well as those engaging with methodological Intersecting considerations in social science research more broadly. Queer Theories This superb collection shows the value of thinking concretely about and Social Science queer methods. It demonstrates how queer studies can contribute to Research debates about research conventions as well as offer unconventional research. The book is characterised by a real commitment to queer as Edited by an intersectional study, showing how sex, gender and sexuality Kath Browne, intersect with class, race, ethnicity, national identity and age. Readers will get a real sense of what you can write in by not writing University of Brighton, UK out the messiness, difficulty and even strangeness of doing research. Catherine J. Nash, Sara Ahmed, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK Brock University, Canada Very little systematic thought has been devoted to exploring how queer ontologies and epistemologies translate into queer methods and methodologies that can be used to produce queer empirical research. This important volume fills that lacuna by providing a wide-ranging, comprehensive overview of contemporary debates and applications of queer methods and methodologies and will be essential reading for J. -
Sokal's Hermeneutic Hoax
Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Philosophies Research Resources of Science 2001 SOKAL’S HERMENEUTIC HOAX: PHYSICS AND THE NEW INQUISITION Babette Babich Fordham University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_research Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Babich, Babette, "SOKAL’S HERMENEUTIC HOAX: PHYSICS AND THE NEW INQUISITION" (2001). Research Resources. 20. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_research/20 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Hermeneutic and Phenomenological Philosophies of Science at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Resources by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BABETTE E. BABICH SOKAL’S HERMENEUTIC HOAX: PHYSICS AND THE NEW INQUISITION As a so-called post-analytic philosopher of science,1 if also from the marginalized sidelines, I have been able to tease analytic philosophers, calling them to account for their desire to imitate scientists and their habit of numbering their paragraphs and their passion for the acronym. Much more seriously, the scientists themselves have recently begun to raise the ante for analytic philosophers in the so-called science wars. In essays and op-ed pieces, physicists are repaying the philosophers’ compliment – not only by adopting, as popular science writers have long done, the role of cultural critic, but also by assuming the mantle of philosophy. Science, once the arbiter of scientific truth, proposes now to vet the truth about everything else. And analytic philosophy of science has found itself faced with no less uncritical option than blanket applause. -
WHO HAS WON the SCIENCE WARS? Darko POLŠEK Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb UDK: 001.9 Izvorni Znanstveni Rad Primljeno: 29
WHO HAS WON THE SCIENCE WARS? Darko POLŠEK Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb UDK: 001.9 Izvorni znanstveni rad Primljeno: 29. 5. 2008. Bogdanov affair in astrophysics is strikingly similar to Sokal’s in "cultural studies". This paper discusses similarities between Sokal and Bogdanov affairs, especially the outrageous methods and behaviour of brothers Bogdanov, and concludes that the latter affair has shown that natural sciences and natural scientists are not beyond reproach, beyond criteria of cogency, validity and criticism, as was once suggested by Sokal’s affair. This has a broader morale: Since "high science" is understood by fewer scholars, such science is sometimes more prone to outrageous hypothesis which would not be tolerated in the more common ones. Therefore, there has to be at least a symmetry in critical approach to scientific claims: neither the type of science, nor the fame of scientists should provide a guarantee of proper conduct and scientific methodology. The paper discusses various meanings of symmetry in scientific approach to science, and discussing "trust" and "distrust" in science suggests a description of the s.c. "circle of credibility". Keywords: Bogdanov affair, Sokal affair, symmetry of criticism, circle of credibility Darko Polšek, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Department of Anthropology, I. Lučića 3, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: dpolsek @ffzg.hr The goal of the paper 1 is to describe the state of the art in the social studies of science. By enlisting problems with scientific fraud of various kinds, it tries to answer the question about the importance of relativism as a standard commitment in the social studies of science (SSS), to assess the weight and long term consequences of the previous affairs in SSS, most noto - 1023 riously the Sokal's affair, and it tries to answer the question: DRU[. -
Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet Author(S): Michael Warner Source: Social Text, No
Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet Author(s): Michael Warner Source: Social Text, No. 29 (1991), pp. 3-17 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466295 Accessed: 02/09/2010 12:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Text. http://www.jstor.org Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet MICHAEL WARNER "Oh, the sly Myra Breckinridge! Nothing can escape the fine net of her dialectic!" Myra Breckinridgel This special section of Social Text has two purposes. -
Transgressing the Boundaries: an Experimental Reconnoitre
134 Jens Jetzkowitz and Stefan Brunzel Research Centre for Society and Ecology (FoGÖ e.V.) [email protected] [email protected] Transgressing the Boundaries: An Experimental Reconnoitre Since the societal influence on climate change and the progressive disappearance of species was officially accepted at the UN conference ‘Environment and Development’ in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, research on the human-environment interaction has increased. In the German-speaking area, the establishment of the programme ‘focus on the environment 1993-1995’ in Switzerland, the 1994 report of the ‘Council of Environmental Experts’ and the public sponsorship of interdisciplinary environmental research in Germany mark the beginning of this process. ‘Transdisciplinarity’ is the magic formula to describe the collaboration of different academic disciplines on environmental problems. It indicates that there is a real problem (not only one of academic construction) that could probably be solved if a broad spectrum of specialist knowledge is applied. In our current research project financed by the Volkswagen Foundation under the sponsorship programme ‘Nachwuchsförderung in der fächerübergreifenden Umweltforschung’, we are working together from the perspectives of ecology and sociology to analyse one aspect of the accelerated urbanization of the earth`s human population during the twentieth century. We are investigating the relationship between changes in the vegetation of frequently disturbed habitats in rural areas (which are subject to human intervention), and the shift in rural lifestyles towards urbanism. When considering the problem of interdisciplinary research we found out that there is very little reflection on the question of how to combine the methods of sociology with those of ecology. -
The Sokal Affair
The following is an editorial response to Alan Sokal's claim, in Lingua Franca, that his article, published in the current issue of Social Text, is a parody, and that he intended this hoax as a critique of science studies. Sokal's articles and further commentary can be found at The Sokal Affair. Science Wars can be ordered through Duke University Press. What were some of the initial responses of the journal's editors when we first learned about Alan Sokal's prank upon Social Text? One suspected that Sokal's parody was nothing of the sort, and that his admission represented a change of heart, or a folding of his intellectual resolve. Another was less convinced that Sokal knew very much about what he was attempting to expose. A third was pleasantly astonished to learn that the journal is taken seriously enough to be considered a target of a hoax, especially a hoax by a physicist. Others were concerned that his hoax might spark off a new round of caricature and thereby perpetuate the climate in which science studies and cultural studies have been subject recently to so much derision from conservatives in science. All of us were distressed at the deceptive means by which Sokal chose to make his point. This breach of ethics is a serious matter in any scholarly community, and has damaging consequences when it occurs in science publishing. What is the likely result of Sokal's behavior for non- scientific journals? Less well-known authors who submit unsolicited articles to journals like ours may now come under needless suspicion, and the openness of intellectual inquiry that Social Text has played its role in fostering will be curtailed. -
Truth, Reason, Objectivity and the Left
Truth, Reason, Objectivity and the Left Alan Sokal This article attempts to present a defence of a scientific world-view defined broadly as a respect for evidence and logic, and for the incessant confrontation of theories with the real world. In short, a plea for a reasoned argument over wishful thinking, superstition and demagoguery. FIRST of all, I don't want to belabour Social fashioned ideas are basically political. I 'Science Wars' issue of Social Text. But are Text's failings either before or after the identify politically with the Left, understood 'local knowledges' all that great? And when publication of my parody: Social Text is not broadly as the political current that denounces local knowledges conflict, which local my enemy, nor is it my main intellectual the injustices and inequalities of capitalist knowledges should we believe? In many target. Secondly, I will not go into the ethical society and that seeks more egalitarian and parts of the Midwest, the 'local knowledges' issues related to the propriety of hoaxing. democratic social and economic arrange- say that you should spray more herbicides I won't address the obscurantist prose and ments. And I'm worried about trends in the to get bigger crops. It's old-fashioned the uncritical celebrity-worship that have American Left - particularly in academia - objective science that can tell us which infected certain trendy sectors of the that at a minimum divert us from the task herbicides are poisonous to farm workers American academic humanities; nor will I of formulating a progressive social critique, and to people downstream. -
Fashionable Nonsense Delivers the Perfect Coup De Grace.” — B a R B a R a E H R E N R E I C H , a U T H O R of Blood Rites a N D the Snarling Citizen
— 7------ 1------ 7------ 7------ 1------- A New Yot\ Times Notable Book of the Year A Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller _j_____1_____1_____ I_____I_____I_____L_____/____ /____ L____ L____ L_L _/ “A thoroughly hilarious romp through the postmodernist academy. Fashionable Nonsense delivers the perfect coup de grace.” — B a r b a r a E h r e n r e i c h , a u t h o r of Blood Rites a n d The Snarling Citizen FASHIONABLE NONSENSE POSTMODERN INTELLECTUALS’ ABUSE of SCIENCE Additional praise for Fashionable Nonsense “Sokal is trying to stake out a territory free from the political claims of cul ture.” — Edward Rothstein, The New York Times “The modem sciences are among the most remarkable of human achieve ments and cultural treasures. Like others, they merit— and reward— respect ful and scrupulous engagement. Sokal and Bricmont show how easily such truisms can recede from view, and how harmful the consequences can be for intellectual life and human affairs. They also provide a thoughtful and con structive critical analysis of fundamental issues of empirical inquiry. It is a timely and substantial contribution." — Noam Chomsky “A brilliant and entertaining book...Fashionable Nonsense exposes the fraud.” — The Advocate “A debut that promises to be [the debate’s] most explosive incarnation yet.” — Kristina Zarlengo, Salon Magazine “Sheer chutzpah and cleverness .. .The book is a sobering catalog o f idiocies by some of those claimed to be the best thinkers of our times.. .1 recommend this book.” — Russell Jacoby, Los Angeles Weekly “[An] important and well-documented book...Every passage is followed by the authors’ often humorous debunking of the writers’ garbled science and obscure language.