Two of Britain's leading cultural commentators provide a hilarious guide to the various trendy discourses that academics have churned out for decades. Covering such schools of thought as difference feminism, deconstruction, and the sociology of knowledge, the author reveals that clotted jargon, tortured syntax, and unreadable style hides the fact that nothing new is being said. This ironic guide offers an array of ludicrous, exaggerated, self-contradicting definitions and explanations of popular intellectual jargon, poking witty fun at postmodern theorists from Adorno to Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, and arming the reader with enough knowledge to salt them into the conversation if ever trapped at a party with a crowd of trendy academics.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Not just a collection of easy quips and jokes...has a depth to it, as the best humour generally does." —Norman Geras, author, Marx and Human Nature
"With wit and invention, Benson and Stangroom take us through the checklist argot that so often litters postmodern texts." —Times Literary Supplement
"Benson and Stangroom have an excellent ear for the clichés of ordinary academic language." —Times Higher Education Supplement
About the Author
Ophelia Benson runs an online cultural forum at www.butterfliesandwheels.com. She lives in Seattle. Jeremy Stangroom is the editor of The Philosopher's Magazine and a coeditor of What Philosophers Think. They are the coauthors of Why Truth Matters.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is humor for the initiated. If you are familiar with (and scornful of) Theory, postmodernism, deconstruction, Derrida, etc., you'll get the jokes. If you're one of the uninitiated (like me), most of the jabs and puns will be baffling. I did some reading about the targets of the humor, after which many of the entries made more sense. But, as the saying goes, frogs and humor fare poorly upon dissection.
You'll understand some of the entries better if you read the authors' other book first, Why Truth Matters. That book also assumes some familiarity with the Theory, but it gives you a much better feel for the basis of the authors' derision.
Even if you don't understand all of the entries, you'll be able to chuckle knowingly when you hit on one you understand. It's great to be on the inside.
You'll understand some of the entries better if you read the authors' other book first, Why Truth Matters. That book also assumes some familiarity with the Theory, but it gives you a much better feel for the basis of the authors' derision.
Even if you don't understand all of the entries, you'll be able to chuckle knowingly when you hit on one you understand. It's great to be on the inside.
25 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is only for those of us who are skeptical of PC and academic nonsense. If you are also, you will find this book very funny with its wry definitions of how to be Politically Correct, how to avoid making judgements, and how to deny that anything is true because everything is relative including this statement. You may miss some of the jokes, but the authors promise to explain them on their website. The frightening part is that some of us parents are paying over $30k per year for professors to teach this fashionable nonsense to our children.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
'The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense-A guide for edgy people' by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom. Is an excellent satire on postmodernist political correct thought. I strongly recommend this book for all university students, atleast in the humanities or non-science subjects. Hopefully with the help of this book they maybe to detect their lecturers indoctrination before they themselves swallow the 'fashionable nonsense' pill and it is too late. The kind of thinking that this book satirizes has trickled down onto high schools, where it harms and even wider audience. So High school students should read this as well.
My sole criticism of this book (for which I deducted one star) is that if one is not already familiar with the concepts (Who is Jacques Lacan for example) then some of the jokes are less than funny. Perhaps the author should put a serious explanation for these sorts of things at the end next time.
My sole criticism of this book (for which I deducted one star) is that if one is not already familiar with the concepts (Who is Jacques Lacan for example) then some of the jokes are less than funny. Perhaps the author should put a serious explanation for these sorts of things at the end next time.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Witoldzio
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Some of it is funny and some of it is intended to give an impression that all academics are a bunch of lunatics, except for scientists, of course (because that's where the real money is in academia).
In a feverishly anti-intellectual society such as ours this book, while pretending to be funny, is pretty harmful to some academic disciplines that are actually REAL.
Do the authors really think that Eugenics was such a brilliant concept? The general feeling from the book is that they wish there was more freedom in expressing joyous racism, homophobia etc. Do they really miss the OLD "fashionable" stuff?
If the title had the word "academic" in it it would indicate that there also exists "academic sense". Yes, there also exists academic sense. Lots of it. Never mentioned in this book because it is not funny. But, according to the authors, academia simply is a huge factory of nonsense. And, as one of the reviewers observed people need to pay money to send kids to college to listen to these professors.
There is also a lot of nonsense in science but science somehow got a free pass in this book.
The results of this book? - more hatred towards "professors". It is obvious that both authors know very well that the majority of the readers of their book have never heard about Derida or Foucault. For most people this will be like reading a sort-of-funny book about fashionable philosophers from the early Qing Period in China.
Nevertheless, some of it is actually funny. Brilliant it is not. And some of it is sad. And plain stupid and immature. Don't bother.
In a feverishly anti-intellectual society such as ours this book, while pretending to be funny, is pretty harmful to some academic disciplines that are actually REAL.
Do the authors really think that Eugenics was such a brilliant concept? The general feeling from the book is that they wish there was more freedom in expressing joyous racism, homophobia etc. Do they really miss the OLD "fashionable" stuff?
If the title had the word "academic" in it it would indicate that there also exists "academic sense". Yes, there also exists academic sense. Lots of it. Never mentioned in this book because it is not funny. But, according to the authors, academia simply is a huge factory of nonsense. And, as one of the reviewers observed people need to pay money to send kids to college to listen to these professors.
There is also a lot of nonsense in science but science somehow got a free pass in this book.
The results of this book? - more hatred towards "professors". It is obvious that both authors know very well that the majority of the readers of their book have never heard about Derida or Foucault. For most people this will be like reading a sort-of-funny book about fashionable philosophers from the early Qing Period in China.
Nevertheless, some of it is actually funny. Brilliant it is not. And some of it is sad. And plain stupid and immature. Don't bother.
0 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a rather boring and uninteresting book. Contrary to its publisher's description it is not full of anecdotal or interesting background information. I wish I hadn't bought it. I might sell it back.
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