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
Conversation
One ring to rule them all:
Subject —> Subjectivity —> Subjectivities
Demonic nuclear option:
Object —> Objectivity —> Objectivities
2
15
Sometimes you have to bundle as a preliminary step
Roads, bridges, etc —> Infrastructure—> Infrastructures
Or pave cowpaths
Vague patterns —> logic —> logics
1
2
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”
2
1
23
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.
2
3
36
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.
2
1
13
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
2
1
9
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
GIF
read image description
ALT
3
1
9
It’s a mistake to think of this as bullshit btw. It is potent stuff. On the rare occasions any of these things leaks out of HSS labs you get economic or culture war WMDs
2
8
Replying to
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?
1
Replying to
Yes. Nobody has a formula. Sometimes an entrepreneur like Jonah Peretti just has a bright idea in a thesis into a buzzfeed
Replying to
Not saying there is a formula. But someone needs to direct these WMDs towards some end. And the motivation stems from the same banal stuff that motivates petty criminals.
Fancy titles just let people feel like they are somehow above it. But they aren't.
1
Show replies

