Of olfactory ethics and oaf-factory hysterics.
Save me from halfwits crying "Midwit!"
Dr Ally Louks just finished her PhD. That would be, for normal people, an occasion to politely congratulate her. The right on Twitter, however, are not pleased. According to the right, Her topic- the social and political significance of the way we talk about smell, especially as it relates to oppression- is too woke, too useless, and, above all, the work of a midwit. She has become the Twitter main character of the week. Tens of millions of people are viewing posts about her work and hundreds of thousands are liking posts supporting or excoriating her.
I have no idea how good her thesis is, I haven’t read it. I suspect, like many things, it would make some great points, but for the most part not be my cup of tea. On the other hand, maybe it would change my life forever and for the better, or perhaps it’s shite. But regardless, I will not hear the charge of midwittery against her coming from the right.
According to her critics, the truly smart people, unlike Dr Louks:
Talk reverentially about (but do not read) Schmitt, who they understand to be a bare emblem for the idea that one has enemies and friends in politics, and should be nice to one’s friends and mean to one’s enemies [groundbreaking]
Take all of the content out of scholastic philosophy and patristic theology and turn it into a decontextualized series of buzzwords to throw about. Same with Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, etc. etc. etc.
Invent heresies that shouldn’t even be possible. How tf are you a Donatist in the 21st century? I’m not even a Christian and I find it infuriating.
Think that Nietzsche actually said this “quote”, “quote it”, constantly and seem to think if he had said it, it would be profound:
In their “intellectual” practice seem to take very seriously, an ever-shifting, ill-defined series of motifs, largely selected because they were funny. In a word, memes, which they think are their special inheritance. Currently popular are: “Shape-rotator”, “Wifejack”, “Large segments of the population cannot entertain counterfactuals” and even the topic of this post “midwit” etc.- again the problem is not that they play with these ideas it’s that in many cases, this random evershifting cast of glyphs seems to be at the core of their analytic framework.
Central figures include Leo Strauss (crazy dude who pretended classical and classic authors agreed with him through secret codes), Mishima (a guy with a seppuku fetish [no, really] who got so horny about the idea he led a doomed coup and then gutted himself) and a dozen or so other closet cases, borderline psychotics, and borderline personality exemplars.
Claim to be worried about sexual depravity, key founders of the movement literal pickup artists and pimps.
Proud of the way their thinking borders on schizophrenia, celebrate this through the notion of schizoposting.
Run so many loops and irony subroutines to try and get attention that not even they know when they are being serious anymore. They take this as a sign of great profundity.
Write (or pretend to read) essays like “On the greatness of the great books, why Homer was so greatly great.”
Come up with ever more elaborate arguments that when Jesus spoke about loving your neighbor he didn’t really mean the immigrant, the drug-afflicted, the political opposite, or whoever the villain of the week is.
Cannot understand the difference between Marxism and Postmodernism, two of the most opposed ideas ever created in the humanities.
Thousands of them apparently feel vindicated by this:
Anyway, yeah, go back to posting about crypto of whatever, poseurs.
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The first criticism that springs to mind of this idea is, "But isn't this just going to kind of be re-treading all the analysis of how the out-group has been portrayed as 'disgusting' in order to reinforce the in-group's belief in their own superiority?" But we'd have to actually read it to see whether it is just kind of a re-tread, or actually says something novel and interesting. I suppose if they awarded her a doctorate, her committee must at least have appreciated what she had to say.
But of course the right wing crowd isn't interested in criticism or challenges of that kind of thing, because they _like_ imposing a hierarchy and declaring that the Other is vile and sub-human. Steve Bannon just wrote the foreword to a book, Unhumans, arguing that leftists have forfeit their human rights, and the Right has a responsibility to exterminate them.
Huh. "Come up with ever more elaborate arguments that when Jesus spoke about loving your neighbor, he didn’t really mean the immigrant, the drug-afflicted, the political opposite, or whoever the villain of the week is." I hadn't considered the distinction between neighbor and, ah, random person. In my defense, I'm not a Christian.