Eerily patient explanations from Sokal and Bricmont of why gibberish is gibberish.… Read the rest
Fashionable nonsense has been with us since the time that prehistoric man first transcribed Of Grammatology on to the walls of the Lascaux caves. Here we cast an eye back at some historical highlights.
Tom Frank on ‘Market Populism’
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonExtreme diets and extreme investing, diversity all around, along with a consensus as ironclad as any in the ’50s.… Read the rest
The Great Convergence
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBeware of neo-Deistic pseudoreligion.… Read the rest
McCarthyism’s Indian Rebirth
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe new chauvinism receives official sanction from government and academic institutions.… Read the rest
And ‘Post-Contemporary’ means…what, exactly?
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf you number your paragraphs, will people mistake you for Adorno?… Read the rest
Paul Gross on the Politicization of Science Education
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAttempts to reshape science classes delegitimize science as an especially trustworthy form of knowledge and promote “other ways of knowing” instead. … Read the rest
Polly Toynbee on Religious Hatred Laws
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonConfusing religion and race is a clever trap the religious have laid for a worried government rightly anxious about race. … Read the rest
Brian Appleyard’s Understanding the Present reviewed.
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Scientists and their works are everywhere described in an arctic language of despair.’… Read the rest
Jihad versus McWorld
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn the 1992 article that he expanded into an excellent book, Barber examines the ways Identity and Shopping are dividing the world between them.… Read the rest
Dwight Macdonald
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘…all but a fraction of his own writing molders unattended in America’s used bookstores. Like the New York Intellectuals with whom he was associated…he is referenced more often than read, a sad fate for a critic who wrote so much, so well and with such wit and insight.’… Read the rest
Professionalization in the Humanities
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhat if you want to talk about an authentic self instead of an ‘authentic self’?… Read the rest
Romila Thapar demolishes Sanskritic Indus Theory
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Indian history from the perspective of the Hindutva ideology reintroduces ideas that have long been discarded and are of little relevance to an understanding of the past.’… Read the rest
Mary Lefkowitz on Distortions of History
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe has his view and you have yours and they have theirs. So it goes.… Read the rest
Paul Boghossian on the Sokal Hoax.
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘To concede that no one ever believes something solely because it’s true is not to deny that anything is objectively true.’… Read the rest
Lee Smith on Tariq Ramadan
Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Ramadan is a cold-blooded Islamist who believes that Islam is the cure for the malaise wrought by liberal values.’… Read the rest