Maybe she has nice knockers and all the editors are male
chauvinist pigs.
This could be a case of the kind of stuff you're not
supposed to understand unless you also are a tech whiz,
strictly not for normal men or women :-/
A paper
titled "Welcome to My Brain" has been published in the
journal Qualitative Inquiry by Sage
which is so unintelligible that it is baffling beyond
belief. Unfortunately, the paper is behind a pay-wall, but
some of the highlights are below.
"This article is therefore about developing recursive
intrinsic self-reflexive as de- and/or resubjective always
evolving living research designs. Inquiry perhaps full
stop—me: An auto-brain—biography and/or a brain
theorizing itself; me theorizing my brain. It is thus
about theorizing bodily here brain and transcorporeal
materialities, in ways that neither push us back into any
traps of biological determinism or cultural essentialism,
nor make us leave bodily matter and biologies behind. It
is an attempt of seeing the real as/through/in its
material-discursive coconstitutive complexity and produce
research from within an ontology and epistemology where
‘matter and meaning are mutually articulated’ (Barad 2007,
p. 152). It is about learning and memory cognition and
experiment poetic and/or creative pedagogical science;
learning ultimately pedagogy as movements in/through
space."
As in the case of the paragraph above, bizarrely, much of
the paper is taken up by explaining what the paper "is
about", without actually really telling us what the paper is
about, or telling us anything for that matter:
"It is broad and multifaceted and with
open-ended references to any kind of sense-making
procedure, a domain of uncharted dimensions my auto-
brain- biography - ethnomethodology attempt."
The author dips in and out of the third and first
person...
"I told you this was chaotic and noisy and my own moving
sensations of sound touch taste and smell."
..and repeatedly for some reason that remains unclear,
mentions a character named John:
"I call him—me . . . John. You?"
"Taxonomies, knowledges, and research that must die to be
resurrected as will in me . . . John."
There are repeated references to the concept of the Möbius
strip, knitting, and of course, John:
"Knitting John, John knitting. Knitting John Möbius.
Möbius knitting John. Giant Möbius Strips have been used
as conveyor belts (to make them last longer, since “each
side” gets the same amount of wear) and as continuous-loop
recording tapes (to double the playing time). In the
1960’s Möbius Strips were used in the design of versatile
electronic resistors. Freestyle skiers have named one of
their acrobatic stunts the Möbius Flip. The wear and tear
of my efforts. My stunts, enthusiasm knitting. My brain
and doubling and John."
I'm grateful it's not just me that's baffled, I did for a
moment wonder if I was myself losing it, but after tweeting
my shock, I received dozens of replies from befuddled
scientists, one
retweeting the article asking his followers if he'd had a
stroke. Many more replied asking if the paper was a
joke along the lines of the Sokal
affair. I decided to contact the author to inquire
whether this was the case and to request a concise
explanation in layman's terms, this is the author's reply:
"Dear Neurobonkers
My paper is an attempt to show that pedagogy (education)
is a complex science. It is an attempt to show the
complexity and multiplicity of teaching and learning and
what inclusiveness thus differences might ultimately
mean. It is an attempt to create a picture of the very
important but often underestimated hard
theoretical/practical work teachers do with their
students. It is an attempt to write against reductionism
and instrumentalism. It is a paper about enthusiasm,
desire, joy and love in schools and in research on
schools. Do you know
what they are?
Kind regards
Anne"
To my mind this paper demonstrates only that unwarranted
complexity in communication can get in the way of science to
the point of obscuring it completely (and that there is no
bottom limit to what the journal Qualitative Inquiry
will publish. As for Sage, it's
not the first time they've published a journal that a
little more than just touches the sublime).
There has recently been a resurgence in the good old "is
psychology a science debate". As far as I'm concerned
psychology certainly is science, but it's obfuscating work
like this that gives the discipline a bad name. Work like
this is a pertinent reminder that just because something is
published in a peer reviewed journal doesn't mean it is good
science or intelligible and just because someone uses big
words doesn't make their ideas more meaningful, but it can
make them less so. If anyone can enlighten me further,
please do so in the comments.
