James Delingpole mindes Alan Sokal, der i 1996 fik publiseret en fagfællebedømt artikel, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“, af nøje designet vrøvl i tidstypiske floskler i et tidsskrift for postmoderne kulturstudier, fordi et par akademikere har fornøjet sig med et lignende forsøg, denne gang hudflettende køns-, og feminismestudier

Some of it was written with the help of the Postmodern Generator – “a website coded in the 1990s by Andrew Bulhak featuring an algorithm, based on NYU physicist Alan Sokal’s method of hoaxing a cultural studies journal called Social Text, that returns a different fake postmodern ‘paper’ every time the page is reloaded.”

This paragraph, for example, looks impressive but is literally meaningless:

Inasmuch as masculinity is essentially performative, so too is the conceptual penis. The penis, in the words of Judith Butler, “can only be understood through reference to what is barred from the signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility” (Butler, 1993). The penis should not be understood as an honest expression of the performer’s intent should it be presented in a performance of masculinity or hypermasculinity. Thus, the isomorphism between the conceptual penis and what’s referred to throughout discursive feminist literature as “toxic hypermasculinity,” is one defined upon a vector of male cultural machismo braggadocio, with the conceptual penis playing the roles of subject, object, and verb of action. The result of this trichotomy of roles is to place hypermasculine men both within and outside of competing discourses whose dynamics, as seen via post-structuralist discourse analysis, enact a systematic interplay of power in which hypermasculine men use the conceptual penis to move themselves from powerless subject positions to powerful ones (confer: Foucault, 1972).

None of it should have survived more than a moment’s scrutiny by serious academics. But it was peer-reviewed by two experts in the field who, after suggesting only a few changes, passed it for publication:

Cogent Social Sciences eventually accepted “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.” The reviewers were amazingly encouraging, giving us very high marks in nearly every category. For example, one reviewer graded our thesis statement “sound” and praised it thusly, “It capturs [sic] the issue of hypermasculinity through a multi-dimensional and nonlinear process” (which we take to mean that it wanders aimlessly through many layers of jargon and nonsense). The other reviewer marked the thesis, along with the entire paper, “outstanding” in every applicable category.

They didn’t accept the paper outright, however. Cogent Social Sciences’ Reviewer #2 offered us a few relatively easy fixes to make our paper “better.” We effortlessly completed them in about two hours, putting in a little more nonsense about “manspreading” (which we alleged to be a cause of climate change) and “dick-measuring contests.”

No claim made in the paper was considered too ludicrous by the peer-reviewers: not even the one claiming that the penis is “the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.”

Det giver mig en undskyldning for at vise Sam Hydes TED Talk, med deres slogan “ideas worth spreading”, hvor han introduceres som en filmskaber, der i Mogadishu skyggede de modige kvinder i deres kamp for at holde gaderne rene. Hyde iklædt et gladiator-harnisk over en rød sparkedragt indleder med at få publikum til at klappe sig selv på skulderen “for saving the world” og fortsætter med at vrøvle om et 2070 paradigmeskift, hvor “Most of our major cities will be replaced with wealthy pleasure-domes”, mens han betror det beundrende publikum “What inspires me is teaching African refugees how to program JavaScript”. Nyd det