From: "Simon Beesley" <simonb-AT-beesleys.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Leibniz
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 15:21:32 +0100


> And what's wrong with people looking for citations, when all too
> frequently posts are made in such general terms that if one IS
> interested in learning something one IS hard-pressed to determine the
> source ....


What's wrong is that the sources are not hard to find anyway and one knows very
well that this obsessive citation-mongering is just a substitute for real work
and thought; i.e. part of the apparatus and paraphernalia of bogus scholarship.
This is homo academicus at his most comical and unlovely worst, revealing
himself to be exactly as Bourdieu portrays him: preening, self-basting,
self-regarding, puffed up and swollen with excessive amour propre, ludicrously
quick to drop the mask of rationality when he feels his sense of dignity and
authority are challenged.

I should add that most of the exchanges I've had on this (mainly academic) list
give the lie to the rude picture of academic man above and have been very
rewarding -- though not for many months. I do recommend anyone grubbing about
for citations or, better, out of an interest in Bourdieu's ideas to look at the
list archives 1997/1998 (and earlier back to 1995), where you'll probably find
enough citations to last several theses and a very high level of discussion.

The other thing to be deplored about citation-mongering is that it brings
Bourdieu scholarship or embryo-scholarship closer and closer to the bad
practices prevalent in cognitive science. To quote myself in my virgin post
to this list:

"I am not, of course, trying to discredit Bourdieu. It's just that the
performative (or gestural) use of statistics, charts, etc. -- the most
conspicuous symptom of physics envy -- in academic psychology (cognitive science
as much as its predecessor) has long been a source of amusement and derision to
people (like myself) outside Academia. At least he doesn't overwork that other
piece of scientific paraphernalia so beloved of the pseudo-sciences: The
obsessive, relentless citation of other workers in the field -- see Mumbles
(1988), Bumpkin (1990), Bialystock (in press), Peabody, Tomkinson and
Merryweather (1902, 1977), Bloatworthy (in conversation), Purblind & Gormley's
work on "indices of citational frequency" (1999), "cognitive dissonance and
psycho-sexual incontinence" in the work of Brewster (anon. 1877), Kartoffel's
concept of "cognitive flatulence" (over a pint of beer last Friday), etc., et.
al., so on, so forth."

Regards
Simon







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