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You create a new social science “thing” is to turn a tangible thing into an abstract thing and then _pluralize_ it so there’s enough for everyone. Eg: time —> temporality —> temporalities matter —> materiality —> materialities future —> futurism —> futurisms Try it! Fun game
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One ring to rule them all: Subject —> Subjectivity —> Subjectivities Demonic nuclear option: Object —> Objectivity —> Objectivities
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Sometimes you have to bundle as a preliminary step Roads, bridges, etc —> Infrastructure—> Infrastructures Or pave cowpaths Vague patterns —> logic —> logics
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Once you get good at this you can make up sentences like “The logics and infrastructures of late capitalism, and the materialities and subjectivities they induce”
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I call these shitcodings. It’s a way to create an inconsequential academic map of consequential things, on which you can wage imaginary battles against ideological adversaries in effigy. A kind of rarefied larp.
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These shitcodings supposedly achieve decenterings of hegemonies and interrogations and subversions of assemblages of power or something 🧐 They don’t do anything of the sort. It’s a kind of angels-on-pinheads theology game. This is what the Glass Bead Game parodies.
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The sad part is, if you learn to parse this language, you’ll actually find interesting insights sometimes, but there’s no pathway to bring it back down to earth. It’s a game that sort of creates a lamarckian dna but has no pathways to express anything into proteins
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Academia is about the glass-bead gamification of war. The only thing that varies is the theater of war. STEM: physical war Social science: economic war Humanities: culture war
War Were Declared Futurama GIF
GIF
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Are these "leaks" really accidental? And does the danger come from academia itself? Or from those who know how to leverage it for their own destructive ends?
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Abstraction/Reification step: builds the memetic potential of the concept to draw the interest of other researchers. Pluralization step: creates sufficient space for research to sustain the research programme’s growth until the original authors are highly cited.