Topical Guide 492
Mark Dorset
Language: Technical, Academic, Gibberish
Parody
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4:
The academics […] all resume talking at once. Matthew can make out bits of their remarks between mouthfuls, thus:
“ — surrealist constructivity of objets trouvés — ”
“ — metalinguistic maze without any pretext at historical absoluteness — ”
“ — defines the intersubjective level tout court — ”
“ — with the destruction of language as the protagonist — ”
“ — although when perceived totally, it is nonexistent — ”
“ — entirely autoreferential — ”
“ — precipitating the crisis of language — ”
“ — descending to an adversarial reductiveness — ”
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal’s intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether “a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”
The article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” was published in the journal’s spring/summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. […] Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax. […]
Alan Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword,” Philosophy and Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 20, Number 2, October 1996:
Alas, the truth is out: my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in the spring/summer 1996 issue of the cultural-studies journal Social Text, is a parody. Clearly I owe the editors and readers of Social Text, as well as the wider intellectual community, a non-parodic explanation of my motives and my true views. […]
Like the genre it is meant to satirize—myriad exemplars of which can be found in its reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I just didn’t have the knack.)
BTW: Kraft wrote Reservations Recommended in 1988 and 1989. The first edition was published in 1990. Sokal submitted his article in 1996. Just sayin’. MD
Food: Cultural Differences in Styles, Methods, and Etiquette of Eating
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 4:
“[…] see if you can get them to stop eating with their hands. It may be authentic, but it’s quite disgusting.” Belinda and Liz are getting a little out of control, snickering, laughing out loud.
Shahnaz Ahsan, “Who needs cutlery anyway? Why food is more delicious when you eat with your hands,” The Observer
When I first introduced my now-husband to my family, he was met with open arms by everyone — except my nine-year-old niece. “Why does Aunty have to marry that man?” she asked, before scathingly adding: “I bet he can’t even eat with his hands.” […]
In the west, what was once considered taboo or ill-mannered has now become run of the mill: “finger food” exists as an entire category of culinary delights, and it is considered normal to eat certain foods with hands. Nobody would look twice at someone eating a burger with their hands in a restaurant, and eating a pizza with a knife and fork may even be considered a faux pas. But there remains a clear line; nobody is eating chicken tikka masala and pilau rice with their hands in their local curry house (save for in a few cherished eateries in parts of east London, where special sinks are installed for the Bangladeshi diners who want to wash before and after partaking in their plates of aromatic kacchi biryani). […]
See also:
Language TG 11; Language: Dialect, Slang, Idiolect, Shibboleths, Jargon TG 137; Language: Slang, Insults, Terms of Abuse TG 140; Slang TG 169; Language and Languages: Learning and Translating TG 393; Language: Idiolect, Private Meanings and References, Code Words TG 373; Idioms: Tug the (One’s) Forelock TG 459
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