Trump Ruins Irony, Too https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/opinion/trump-ruins-irony-too.html
> The writer Greil Marcus argues that such scare quotes “are a writer’s assault > on his or her own words.” They signal writers’ fears, he says, of the very > words they’re using. I think I agree. I (think) I use quotes for 2 things: 1) to undermine any automatic invocation of a set of concepts by the tag within the quotes, especially if I think that tag _tends_ to automatically invoke a particular set of concepts, and 2) to indicate that I'm talking about the tag/symbol, not whatever meaning might be associated with it. I was sparked onto this thread this morning when (I think it was) Alice Cooper was commenting on Chuck Berry's method of not traveling with a band, but hooking up with a local band where he played. The comment was something about how Berry made a good catchy tune with simple foundations that anyone could pick up once they'd heard it (it had been invoked). Quotes used this way _are_ an attempt to undermine our confidence in our understanding of reality. Yet, I think it's less a fear of the words and their assemblage, but more a purposeful objective to get at the underlying structures in spite of which words are used. ... like M theory or the 6 types of string theory is an attempt to get at the underlying structure despite the language used to approach it. >8^) And this, again, relates back to Lakoff's description of Trump's closure-free dog whistling as well as the larger concept of "buzzword consulting", which dominate[d|s] the fog surrounding complex systems. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
