OK...where's MY grant money?
Posted on 08/05/2018 3:35:42 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Critic calls research ‘postmodern word salad’
University of Toronto scholar Stephanie Springgay’s newly published research alleges that there is more to felt, the material, than typically perceived.
In her paper, “‘How to Write as Felt’: Touching Transmaterialities and More-Than-Human Intimacies,” published online in late July by Studies in Philosophy and Education, Springgay suggests that felt, a “dense material of permanently interlocking fibers,” can be linked to racism and capitalism.
“[T]his paper addresses ‘the problem of education’ that is predicated on cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics that assume knowledge enters from an outside, that is predicated on progress, and that regulates and violently disavows particular bodies,” it states.
“Felting as a posthuman proposition demands that we stop thinking broadly about … education. Instead we need to consider intimate transmaterial touching relations that do not intensify settler colonial mastery over human and nonhuman life,” the paper adds.
Springgay is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Toronto, according to her curriculum vitae; and from 2004 to 2009, she worked as an assistant professor in visual arts and women’s studies at Penn State University.
Her online bio states her research focus includes “feminist new materialism, queer theory and the inhuman, research-creation, methodologies, and affect theory.”
As to her theories on felt, she further explains in her paper: “In felting, wool fibres co-mingle and enmesh and evoke what Barad (2012) refers to as a queer self-touching. When we touch ourselves, she writes, we encounter an uncanny sense of the stranger or otherness within the self. Using quantum theory to shape a theory of self-touching, Barad explains how a particle touches itself, and then that touching subsequently touches itself, releasing an infinite chain of touching touches.”
With that, Springgay adds, “… ‘How to write as felt,’ as a more-than-human proposition is an invitation to leap inside the movement of the fold, to become involved in a practice of intense agitation and difference. Felting is a stretching out, a space of encounter where thinking-making-doing extends beyond fragile boundaries, beyond frayed and indeterminate edges, expanding in the fluidity of the smooth. It is to write, or rather event research-creation, in a continuous present, as the power to begin again, infinitely touching.”
The entire paper runs 11 pages plus two full pages of references, in which she cites her own previously published work 13 times, including her 2008 piece “Body Knowledge and Curriculum: Pedagogies of Touch in Youth and Visual Culture” and her 2017 co-authored paper “Stone Walks: Inhuman Animacies and Queer Archives of Feeling.”
Who funds her research?
Springgay received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for her felt research, she states in the paper. According to her curriculum vitae, Springgay has received $1,244,992 from the council since 2011 for research on various topics.
The University of Toronto did not respond to a request for comment from The College Fix.
Meanwhile, Springgay’s research caught the eye of a Twitter account that examines and critiques scholars’ published research called “New Real Peer Review.” The account, run anonymously, first noticed the paper and dismantled Springgay’s research, calling her paper a “postmodern word salad.”
In her paper, Springgay explained that this form of writing is more like “the practice of making art or making something, and the doing of research. This I also refer to as a thinking-making-doing.” Real Peer Review dismissed it as “vomit worthy scholarship.”
New Real Peer Review also weighed in on Springgay’s discussion on the “frictional force of felting.”
“It’s a hot and messy piece of something,” the account also joked when Springgay referred to her paper as “like the felting process—messy, wet, and knotted.”
The account went on to “thank” the people who funded the research.
“Thank the Canadian taxpayers for these fascinating new insights,” the account said.
When asked about the criticism she received, Springgay’s automatic email system informed The College Fix that she is at a conference for the next two weeks and will be slow to respond to emails.
Nuttier than a squirrel turd. LOL
““[T]his paper addresses ‘the problem of education’ that is predicated on cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics that assume knowledge enters from an outside, that is predicated on progress, and that regulates and violently disavows particular bodies,” it states.”
What da HELL does this even MEAN?
It’s just nonsense!
One of the ways to diagnose schizophrenia is to analyze a person’s statements that have no connection to reality but seem to have an internal logic to that person only.
I’m not sure, might be a problem here?
Is schizophrenia bad?
“She’s a PIKER by American college prof standards!”
No kidding!
When do we stop funneling our tax dollars to these institutions that hire these mentally ill perverts who are anti white anti American and foster hate for this country
Let's hear it for white cishetero patriarchy!!!
Orwell 101: Leftists love to invent jargon words to deceive the naive.
Been meaning to tell you...my Dad’s 28’ sailboat was named, ‘Ms. B. Haven.’ We had a lot of fun on that boat! :)
Did you write that??
This is not real. It has to be parody. It’s a joke.
Yep. I never wrote down the date for writing the first part. It was obviously in response to the people removing anything from view that offends them and very probably first appeared here on FR. The new bit was today as stated.
I see what you did there.
Have Patience! :-)
I would love to corner this woman and ask her to identify and describe a quantum function. I'll bet she has no clue, but she thinks that using the word establishes her as an intellectual.
I recently read a study in which the researchers found that when people of low IQ (sorry, I don't remember the cut-off value) are asked to read a word salad, they think that it is deep and profound. Some reported being profoundly moved by the insights they believed they were reading. Higher IQ people recognized the word salad as nonsense immediately.
This causes me to wonder if low-IQ people interpret word salad as being profound because they cannot actually tell the difference between highly technical scholarship (such as one would find in any STEM publication) and pure nonsense (such as this woman wrote).
Transmaterialities: Linen that identifies as silk, wool that identifies as angora ...
More-than-human intimacies: She likes to get it on with livestock.
Felt, huh? Sticks to some people’s heads??
Wow! Well done.
How cool is that?
I love it!
Wish I could see a picture of it!
Sounds like it was beautiful!
Love it...makes my day! 1
Glad I could help.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.