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.
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I’d like to know what people in the physics department there think about her appropriating their subject matter. I’d wager that they are too scared of the PC police to make a fuss.
Back when I was in college (late 70s) I realized that in order to get at least a B+ on any paper, all I had to do was write that whatever the subject was, it illustrated how man’s inhumanity to man transcended the class struggle.
I can see now that no longer makes the grade. It’s not nearly schizophrenic or unintelligible enough.
I’ve been writing them on and off for years on these forums. Here’s two that I was really proud of that thankfully are out of date.
...
...
Is There Any Bammy Up There? (07/06/2010)
...
Is there any Bammy up there?
Is there any Bammy up there?
Is .. there .. any .. Bammy .. up .. there?
Hello, is there any Bammy up there?
Just wave if you can hear us.
Is there anyone at home?
Comeon, now, the nation’s feeling down,
You said you could ease our pain,
And get us on our feet again!
We’d relax, if you’d share some information with us,
Just the basic facts,
What happened to transparency?
There is no shift in the polls
I am succeeding!
Moving the Ship of State
Where you’re not perceiving!
Though it’s only been coming through in waves
Your gonna really get it any day!
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye,
But now that child is in the White House,
I can grasp for it now,
The dream is now,
To transform the world and make Mao proud!
I ... I, I have become the One!!!
...
...
The President Song (05/19/2008)
...
...
Senator Obama:
Day after day here in the U.S. Senate
People just don’t understand the stress
Now that we’re in control ... sure the cafeteria is the best, but ...
But I never really wanted to do this job in the first place!
Share the stage with 113 other preening bumbling nere-do-wells!
I... I wanted to be...
THE PRESIDENT!
(piano vamp)
Leaping from issue to issue!
As they come down the mighty rivers of Public Opinion!
With my best girl by my side!
The War on Poverty!
The Economy!
The Global Warming Crisis!
Disarmament!
And Saving the Polar Bears!
We’d sing! Sing! SING!
Oh, I’m the President, and I’m okay,
I sleep all night and I work all day.
The Gang of 14:
He’s the President, and he’s okay,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
Senator Obama:
I see important folks, I eat my lunch,
I go to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays I give speeches
And have State Dinners nightly.
The Gang of 14:
He sees important folks, he eat his lunch,
He go to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays ‘e gives speeches
And has State Dinners nightly.
He’s the President, and he’s okay,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
Senator Obama:
I speak of hope, I bob and weave,
I like to pass the buck.
If ever there’s a scandal,
My VEEP is outta’ luck.
The Gang of 14:
He speaks of hope, he bobs and weaves,
He likes to pass the buck.
If ever there’s a scandal,
His ... VEEP is outta’ luck???
Senator McCain:
Is that what he just-? Oh!!!
The Gang of 14:
He’s the President, and he’s okay,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
Senator Obama:
I speak of hope, I levee new taxes,
Regulations and speech codes.
I’m glad I married a commie
Just like my dear mama.
The Gang of 14:
He speaks of hope, he raises our taxes,
New regulations and oppressive speech codes.
He’s glad he married a commie
Just like his dear mama.
He’s the President, and he’s okay,
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
Senator Whitehouse:
Wait! I’m confused. In the original skit didn’t they act outraged at this point?
Senator Snowe:
What’s the problem?
Senator Whitehouse:
Well, it’s just ... you know. And I’m pretty sure there are only 100 Senators. Not 114.
Senator Byrd:
X-Nay on the Enators-Say! BJ-Lay Ituation-Say!
Senator Whitehouse:
RS-71-Lay?
(nods all around)
But .. how?
Senator McCain:
A few extra Norths/Souths any day now.
Senator Obama:
Hey, I thought this song was about me?
Stop improvising and speak on cue!
The Gang of 14:
Yes, Oh unreproachable one!
Somewhere a Volkswagon is missing seat covers
Didn’t a suit get made out of some for Herb Tarlek?
Now THAT is funny!
You really nailed it!
Simulated academia. Has the form and some of the language, but nothing but a great void behind the mask.
She’s been sniffing too much toluene from those felt-tipped magic markers.
That’s the definition of mental masturbation.
56 years ago today...
What, no self-fellation?
She’s brilliant. (Have you gotten anybody to pay you over a million dollars to spew drivel like that?)
practically every nationality has been a ‘colonialist’, from Inuit to Bantu, Apache to Mayan, Japanese to Mongolian, Indian to Persian to Egyptian. It is myopic, uneducated, propagandist and racist to single out a specific ethnic group as the only ‘colonialists’ in the world.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar....
——assistant professor in visual arts and women’s studies-—
There is no lower ranked academic credential
(we all know what she did to get it)
Should have been strangled in her crib.
You know, if it were socially acceptable, I would ensconce myself in velvet. -—— George Costanza
Like the Sokol hoax?
I remember that one; all of the professors in my grad program were laughing their butts off
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