The polar bear is despairing again, thanks the quote from here, for an event whose organisers “propose an innovative coming together of activists and academics to build bridges, initiate debate and develop future research agendas….” Yeah, well, good luck with that…
MCFly sez: There is a culturally-determined and deterministic propensity for individuals with extensive tertiary education and post-doctoral qualifications to devise and implement the strategic placements of multi-polysyllabic terminology in their intramural communications – and by extension their extramural efforts at constructive dialogue with wider communities of stakeholders – which reveals a quasi-Foucauldian and post-Bulterian* desire to reify pseudo-contra-hegemonic discourse(s). The Bataille/battle around these contested and contestable deployments of obfuscatory and onanistic onamastics that ensues thus ensures the overcoming of claims for demotic (Gricean) phraseology that might otherwise lead to destabilising conceptual imbrications and interpolations with other concerned cognitive actors.
* It doesn’t really, but what abstract is complete without a reference to Micky and Judy?
Approximate translation: (Some) academics use long words to hide their lack of ideas, and so hope to protect themselves from public ridicule.
Marc Hudson
mcmonthly@gmail.com
Disclaimer: We at MCFly are not anti-intellectuals. We are not even anti-academics (some of our best friends are academics). There are two posts coming up that will show this. One is a review (that is going to be beyond gushing) for an TOTALLY AMAZING book by a US-based sociologist called Kathleen Blee. The book is called “Democracy in the Making.” The other is a summary (and possible video?) of an article by a Scottish academic and an American one on the important difference between “resilience” and “resourcefulness”. It IS possible to have useful ideas, and to write clearly.
It may be that the “protests and events” people have good ideas, and will bring together people with good ideas that are useful to social movements – time will tell . What is clear at the moment though, is that they lack either (or both?) the willingness and the ability to communicate their ideas to people who don’t have their cultural capital.
manchester climate monthly 
A friend sent me this, and has given me permission to repost;
I’ve noticed just the last year or so (no doubt it’s been going on longer and I’m behind the times) that anarchism seems to be taking the place in academic circles that Marxism held in the later 20th century – I imagine some of the same individuals are involved. It’s becoming the natural home of would-be rebels in arts/social sciences: the non-conformist’s new conformism. There are some who make a genuine effort to understand anarchist practice, and a few who make a theory out of their experience of practice (eg Uri Gordon), but this event just seems like pure abstraction by people who’ve spent more time reading critical theory than engaging with real issues, never mind with real people. What’s the point, other than funding? And why on earth is this being put on by the ‘Events, tourism and hospitality’ department!? (and why does this department exist?)
Further evidence of our society having disappeared up its own arse. I’m not mad, it really is the rest of the world that’s gone loopy, etc…