Author: Ophelia Benson

I hope you’re not bored with Priya Venkatesan yet, because I’m not. She’s the mother lode, so to speak.

Tyler Brace asked her if it was true that she called the students fascist demagogues, and she said no never, not true.

I went into class after that whole clapping incident, and I said. ‘What you did was horrific. What you did was really bad.’ Not bad, I didn’t accuse them of being bad, I said what you did was unacceptable. They started arguing with me. I said fine. You think you know everything. You think you know everything without the knowledge base to boot, without the training, you think you have a command of all the knowledge in the world at this stage in your life, then I’m sorry, that is fascism and that is demagoguery. When I made the two words fascism and demagoguery I looked at the picture on the wall. I made sure that I did not look at the students, and that I did not make any personal attacks on them.

Isn’t that cool? She didn’t call them fascist demagogues, all she did is say when you do what I’m saying you did, that is fascism and that is demagoguery – and she was very careful to look at the wall when she said it, so they would know it was nothing personal. There’s semiotics for you! Or something.

The fact of the matter is that by being so arrogant about their command of knowledge about arguing with me about every point that I was making and that’s really arrogant. That’s very arrogant because frankly, and I’m not trying to be an academic elitist, but frankly, they don’t even have a B.A. They’re freshmen. They’re freshmen.

Yeah. And they just don’t have the rich knowledge that she has, which shines through in everything she says and writes. You have only to read the full interview (endless as it is) to see that. She’s erudition itself. She knows a really really lot and they don’t.

[T]he fact of the matter is that I have the PhD in literature, I make the assessment if someone has talent for philosophy, literary theory, and literary criticism. A student might say, well, the hell with you I’m still going to become a literary critic, I had to do that, there were people who criticized me while I was a student, you’re not a good writer or whatever, but I said well I’m still going to go ahead with my goals, but I never made any personal attacks on them…

Ya…but you should have listened to them though. They were right. You’re not a good writer. And I wouldn’t trust your opinion on who has a talent for philosophy, either. Literary ‘theory’ you can decide if you want to, but philosophy? I don’t think so.

I made the argument that in many cases science and technology did not benefit women, and if women were benefiting science and technology, it was an aftereffect. It was not the goal of science and technology. It was a very feminist claim, and you may not agree with it. But that was Merchant’s argument…But there was one student who really took issue with this…science and technology, women really did benefit from it, and to criticize patriarchal authority on the basis that science and technology benefited patriarchy or men, was not sufficient grounds for this type of feminist claim. And he did this with great rhetorical flourish; it was very invective, it was a very invective sort of tone.

Aw, that’s a shame. I suppose he was another one who has no talent for philosophy.

Okay I take it back, it’s not funny, it’s disgusting. Read the interview – in Dartmouth Review, a notoriously right-wing paper, and by god she’s giving them ammunition.

Read her dropping names and explaining that students are not familiar with these earth-shaking names and so that’s why they get everything wrong and don’t understand how right she is.

it’s kind of interesting that when you are trained in graduate school, it’s sort of like, you know, you’re trained in this kind of—I don’t want to say it’s political—you must be aware that most college campuses are very liberal…and the training which you receive, it’s very much slanted toward a particular political point of view…In other words, talk about, you know, in French theory—we talk about Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan was a very radical psychoanalyst, but he’s considered almost like a god, Jean-François Lyotard… Bruno Latour—highly regarded in the field of science and technology studies. But these students aren’t aware of the framework in which I was training. They’re not; they’re just coming into college. So right there, there’s a discrepancy between what I know and how I was trained and their worldview.

In short, they haven’t been trained to worship her gods, so there’s a discrepancy. They haven’t joined the church of Lacan and Lyotard and Latour, so they don’t know what she knows, poor things.

They were concepts that were part of the field, and I was trying to bring it to the table. It offended their sensibilities, because the whole course of “Science, Technology, and Society” was about problematizing science and technology, and explaining the argument that science is not just a quest for truth, which is how we think about science normally, but being influenced by social and political values…This type of argumentation—the reason I did that in the context of expository writing, I thought “by reading arguments, they will learn how to form arguments, think better, and write better.” That was my goal, because when you think better, you write better.

True. So go back and learn to think better. Learn to think instead of dropping names. Then you’ll write better and also talk better. Right now you’re in a bad way.

Is it another Sokal hoax? It is a massive con, right? It can’t be for real? Priya Venkatesan is too good to be true, isn’t she?

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws. The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book. Have a nice day.

Read the whole article; it’s full of rich stuff like that.

University Diaries comments.

I’m fascinated by the fact that a remedial writing class – which is essentially a class in 8th grade English – was called ‘Science, Technology and Society.’ Why not ‘Real Estate for Beginners’ or ‘Molecular Biology’ or ‘Torts’ – why Science, Technology and Society? Because it’s all part of the Grand Plot of pomo whack jobs to infiltrate Our Institutions Of Higher Learning? Because people who teach remedial writing are allowed to call it anything they like? Or what? I’d love to know – and meanwhile it makes me laugh like a drain. (Sad for the students though, since she can’t write herself. ‘whom shall go unmentioned’ indeed – Hey Teach, I gotta go to the jon and smoke a dooby!)

How romantic. It makes me go all sentimental. Is it the same for you?

She screamed, kicked and scratched at the man, but he brought three male friends, a driver and two backup abductors to ensure she couldn’t escape. More young men in a second vehicle trailed, on the lookout for witnesses who might try to halt the brazen afternoon capture. But Ms. Edieva knew that no Chechen would rescue her that September day nearly three years ago. Well versed in Chechnya’s bride-abducting traditions, she understood she was caught up in a centuries-old ritual in which her captor, a suitor she had frequently rebuffed, was going to force her to marry him. “I told him I hated him,” she said, but he smiled. “It doesn’t matter if you love me or hate me,” he told her calmly. “I want you, and you are going to be my wife.”

Ahhhh – isn’t that sweet? That’s real love, that is. He doesn’t care if she loves him or hates him. He doesn’t care if she’s happy to marry him or miserable. He doesn’t care if she’s happy or miserable period. He doesn’t give a good god damn what she feels, he just wants her, as one might want a chair, or a hamburger, or an inflatable doll. Have you ever heard anything so touching?

Young women are snatched from bus stops, on their way home from school and sometimes out of their own yards. A shocking video with clips of men dragging screaming young women, their books, purses and cellphones sent flying, is a popular YouTube posting. Authorities in the two restive republics routinely turn a blind eye to the violent practice, preferring to depict it as a romantic tradition…Some claim the practice has a fairytale quality and many young women dream of being abducted by a handsome man. “It’s a sign that [a man] really loves her,” said Mariyat Muskeeva, a cultural liaison officer with the Chechen local government. “If a woman can tell her children that their father kidnapped her, it’s a great love story.”

So true. In much the same way, OJ Simpson said that if he had killed his wife, it would have shown how much he loved her. That is just so, so sweet. The more violent a man is toward a woman, the more he ignores what she wants and imposes his will on her instead, the more like a thing he treats her, the more unmistakable he makes his love. Like that guy in Austria for instance – now that’s what I call romantic.

Most women interviewed across Chechnya and Ingushetia disagreed, saying they felt no affection from the men who stalked them and shoved them into waiting cars…Women’s roles in these tradition-bound societies are largely submissive and they perform the lion’s share of household tasks. They are expected to act demurely in the presence of men and to eat at separate tables…Despite the official line that bride abduction is largely stage-managed by the young lovers themselves, scores of young Chechen and Ingush women told similar stories of abductions followed by hours of agonizing negotiations, often with complicit relatives.

Okay maybe not so romantic after all.

Funny how ‘religion’ often seems to manifest largely as an unappeasable loathing of women. How the very first item on the agenda seems to be punishing women for being women, and terrorizing women for the crime of existing, and telling women what to do and killing them if they don’t do it.

The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her “honour killing” is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a “genocide” against women in the name of religion…

She has an unknown number on her phone, so let’s kill her. Her life is worth nothing, our rage is worth an infinite amount.

Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase…[R]ecent calls by the Kurdish MP Narmin Osman to outlaw honour killings have been blocked by fundamentalists. “Honour killings are not actually a crime in the eyes of the government,” said Houzan Mahmoud, who has had a fatwa on her head since raising a petition against the introduction of sharia law in Kurdistan. “If before there was one dictator persecuting people, now almost everyone is persecuting women…It is difficult to described how terrible it is, how badly we have been pushed back to the dark ages. Women are being beheaded for taking their veil off. Self immolation is rising – women are left with no choice. There is no government body or institution to provide any sort of support. Sharia law is being used to underpin government rule, denying women their most basic human rights.”

I wonder if Seumas Milne considers that kind of thing ‘non-violent.’

The new Iraqi constitution, according to Mahmoud, is a mass of confusing contradictions. While it states that men and women are equal under law it also decrees that sharia law – which considers one male witness worth two females – must be observed. The days when women could hold down key jobs or enjoy any freedom of movement are long gone. The fundamentalists have sent out too many chilling messages. In Mosul two years ago, eight women were beheaded in a terror campaign…”We urge the international community, the government to condemn this barbaric practice, and help the women of Iraq.”

It’s not just according to Houzan Mahmoud that it’s contradictory to say women and men are equal under law and that sharia must be observed. Women and men are not equal under sharia, so of course it’s contradictory.

Sometimes people try to do the right thing and their very effort to do the right thing causes them to do just the wrong thing they meant to avoid. Sometimes that’s sad, other times it’s funny. Sometimes it’s part funny part irritating.

A Bradford man attacked and threatened after his family converted from Islam to Christianity was told by police to “stop being a crusader”…The No Place To Call Home report, by Ziya Meral, states apostates are “subject to gross and wide-ranging human rights abuses.”…The report, launched today, describes how the Pakistani community in Bradford reacted to the family’s conversion by shouting abuse and death threats, vandalising their house and car, attacking Mr Hussein and following his wife.

Really?! The entire Pakistani community in Bradford shouted abuse and death threats and followed Ms Hussein – that must have been something to see.

No, of course that’s not what happened, and it’s not what the Bradford Telegraph meant to say, but it was so busy trying not to offend anyone by referring to people without the c word that it did in fact, idiotically, say that. Block thinking taken to its logical conclusion – if some ten or twenty Pakistanis do something then that thing was done by ‘the Pakistani community.’ So much for precision, clarity, accuracy, and above all, fairness. Any Bradford ‘members of the Pakistani community’ who don’t approve of such behavior must be feeling very chuffed.