Entry tags:

authorwank, books, fun with fundies, inappropriate references to acts of god, it's not for you, pretention, religion, reviews

Intelligently designed wank
Who's in the mood for a good ol' academic tussle?

1. Professor Steve Fuller writes a book called Dissent over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism.

2. Professor AC Grayling reviews the book for New Humanist magazine.

It is sometimes hard to know whether books that strike one as silly and irresponsible...are the product of a desire to strike a pose and appear outrageous (the John Gray syndrome), or really do represent that cancer of the contemporary intellect, post-modernism.

3. Fuller responds to the review.

I wish I could repay AC Grayling’s compliment by naming an exotic mental pathology after him, but regrettably his review of Dissent over Descent displays disorders of a much more mundane kind: he has merely failed to read the book properly and does not know what he is talking about.

4. Grayling responds to the response.

Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all). Alas, I did.

5. Forum fight!

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	negativecosine 2008-10-03 08:05 am UTC (link)
	Is it a perpetual state, or just for the occasion of the debate? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sabinelagrande 2008-10-03 08:07 am UTC (link)
	Perpetual. We are anthropologists, after all. Hell, we drink in seminar. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	negativecosine 2008-10-03 08:08 am UTC (link)
	Oh, well, anthropologists.. The only people I mock more than y'all are the sociologists, who seem to favor box wine. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

sabinelagrande
2008-10-03 08:16 am UTC (link)

Hey, you'd be plastered 24/7 too if you had to read this much ethnography. It's like a drinking game: every time the informants drink, I drink. I haven't been sober since August. To make matters worse, I'm a linguistic anthropologist. I dare you to read Chomsky sober and not take an ice pick to your ear.

Ugh, sociologists. They have no taste. They like to stand on the periphery at anthro parties and drink the good booze when nobody's looking.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

negativecosine
2008-10-03 08:21 am UTC (link)

I'm a linguist and a litera...ture...thingist. So I'm reading Chomsky and Said and I still blame the current inebriation on Palin.

There is an exquisite joy in the lameness of sociologists. They tried to seduce me to their side a couple years ago, and it wasn't until I realized I got higher grades for making shit up that I decided even literary theory is more honest than that.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sabinelagrande 2008-10-03 08:29 am UTC (link)
	Fucking Chomsky. I'm tired of relearning all of theory every damn time he changes his damn mind. But, to be fair, every time I see Palin, I feel like I need a to drink. For like, a day. I just... don't even know about sociologists. They are special, special snowflakes. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	negativecosine 2008-10-03 08:31 am UTC (link)
	Chomsky has nothing on Said, I promise you that. Have you had Orientalism inflicted upon you? The language is just... I think he's being intentionally dense, honestly. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sabinelagrande 2008-10-03 08:37 am UTC (link)
	I've managed to escape Said so far, fortunately, but I tend to jump behind the couch and hide when anybody mentions the concept in general. ...Wait a minute, that sombitch wrote about othering, didn't he? I have read him- and now I am reminded of that incredibly unpleasant experience. Ugh. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	negativecosine 2008-10-03 08:42 am UTC (link)
	I can never remember what else he's read, because the professors here have a fetish for post-colonial studies (and ~worlding~, isn't that cute?), so all we read is that damn book. Over and over, excerpt upon excerpt, of the most molasses-like prose that has ever been posed. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sabinelagrande 2008-10-03 08:47 am UTC (link)
	Agh, fucking colonies. There's a reason I work with dead languages (and anthropologists, but that just means I can do my research without leaving campus). You have my deepest sympathies. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	negativecosine 2008-10-03 08:42 am UTC (link)
	*written, not read. Wooo literacy! (Reply to this)(Parent)

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