Call me woke, but I didn’t find that abstract absurd at all. Translating out of academese, I’d summarise it as:
People use smell as a way of indicating how we ought to see a person. Most obviously, smell can be used to evoke disgust. For example, one way to intensify lower-class depiction can be to say that someone smells dirty. A bit less obviously, smell can be used to indicate desire, including in ways that aren’t actually flattering. Because smell is so visceral, it might even be a particularly effective way of doing this. Accordingly, let’s analyse these dynamics in literature and see how they could affect how we see other people.
Seems reasonable to me. I suspect a lot of people’s reactions are based in a disconnect between the high academic language and the low — indeed, visceral — connotations that smell does indeed have. But, as much as I’d love to dispense with the entire set of expectations that require academics across every discipline to talk so impenetrably, I can’t fault a PhD student for adhering to convention, especially when we’re talking about her thesis abstract, of all things.
Her thesis could actually be quite revealing and possibly profitable. How much do Americans spend on perfume, deodorant, air fresheners, breath mints and mouth wash, and fairly recently laundry deodorizer?
It’s sad a simple post on Social Media spawned the reeking denizens of 𝕏 into a gas-passing frenzy of anonymous swine.
The “woke mobs” and “anti-woke mobs” are not all that analogous.
Ally Louks will be just fine. She’s shown that she’s capable of propagating ridiculous ideas, and since she lives and works in an academic ecosystem that rewards the adherence to and propagation of ridiculous ideas, there is not much that her online detractors can do to her except call out her ridiculousness.
It’s worth noting that “intersectionality” is not a “ridiculous idea” in the sense that, say, believing in Tarot cards is a ridiculous idea. The whole point of Louks’ thesis is to contribute to an intellectual project with the express purpose of deconstructing and subverting norms and institutions which most people value and wish to preserve. Some measure of anger towards those who participate in that project (to the point that it becomes their career) seems justifiable, at least.
Justine Sacco got fired while she was on a plane and completely unaware of her predicament. All this happened, not because she was part of an ecosystem that huge numbers of people rightly view as deleterious to the things they value, but because she tweeted a Jimmy Carr-type joke that did not land.
Do I want any harm to come to Louks? No of course not. But after the past twelve years of leftist nonsense – the sort of nonsense that dissertations such as Louks’ bolsters – I can’t find a violin tiny enough to play.
So, what you’re saying is that Louks is a privileged person who holds views that you consider to be related to a harmful social tendency (even if you can’t directly demonstrate any harm from this specific person), and this means anger against her is justified and you’re not going to sympathise with her for getting attacked over a mild celebratory social media post that would ordinarily have been of no interest to anyone.
I see the parallel you’re attempting to draw, but I don’t find it convincing. Academia is a much more quantifiable institution than “systemic racism” or any of the nebulous leftist boogeymen are.
I wouldn’t call Louks “privileged” any more than I would call a televangelist faith-healer “privileged” for operating in an ideological ecosystem where they remain largely insulated from spoken critiques of said ecosystem.
Louks is participating in a political project. Any person who uses the word “intersectionality” in their dissertation will be the first to tell you that they’d love for their work to have a tangible, material impact on the outside world. Criticizing the public messaging of such an actor is totally fair game imo.
Clearly, you think I’m going about this the wrong way. So I ask of you: how should I go about this? If I think that ridiculous ideas propagated from participants in now-ridiculous institutions have deleterious effects, what is the fair, reasonable response by a person who shares my views?
This particular social media post is not trying to exercise political influence. I think it’s disingenuous to even call it “public messaging,” to be honest, since this implies a message intended for the public, not merely a publicly-available message that was obviously only intended for friends (because why would anyone else care?) You’re deliberately using language and comparisons that inflate her status. Televangelist faith healers have way more money than PhD students, for example, and they are at the top of a hierarchy in a way that PhD students very much are not. So even if you don’t use the word “privilege,” you’re clearly invoking the same kind of “high status equals fair game” reasoning.
Let’s go for a more reasonable comparison. Suppose I think that country clubs are elitist institutions, and that even when they are no longer overtly racist they are still all about preserving social hierarchies. If I see someone saying “hooray, I have obtained Senior Member at the country club” getting attacked on social media, what should I do?
The answer is, obviously, that I should disapprove of the social media attacks, because this is just a random person trying to go about their day. Even if I disagree with their life choices, I shouldn’t want them to be the target of a pile-on, especially not for something so unquestionably mild.
Do you think that the saturation of critical-theory, intersectionality studies, etc, within higher education is a bad trend that facilitates bad outcomes in public policy and civil society? I think it’s bad. If you think it’s a good thing, that’s your business, but it likely means we’re at an impasse.
If you believe that the trend is negative, then I think you have to consider the possibility that criticism of the trend will be pointed towards participants in the trend at all level of the hierarchy. I agree that being a new PhD doesn’t covey a lot of status upon the recipient. Part of the reason we’re in this mess is because of the jarring overproduction of postgrads.
There is no Pope of postmodern nonsense, one single person or machine at which to aim criticism – that’s part of the reason it remains to resilient. Maybe 2% of the people in that ecosystem are the Claudine Gays. The other 98% want to be one of the Claudine Gays.
Re: your question about the country club tweet, of course I would think that attacking a person for such a tweet would be absurd because I think the rationale is absurd. People *do* attack people on Twitter for such things, though – luckily, they’re less successful now than they used to be in the time of Justine Sacco.
My ideal is that it will someday be as unappealing to publicly announce a critical-theory postgrad as it is to enthusiastically announce that you got a job at a company that manufactures nitrous oxide canisters to sell to adolescents. You may disagree, but that’s where I have my sights set.
As with every discussion about social media pile-ons, there will always be an awkward interaction between “how bad is this?” and how bad something has to be before it justifies cruelty to otherwise unremarkable people.
Personally, I don’t think people should generally get piled on for announcing their new job at Philip Morris or Nestle or whatever evil company you want to point to (I’m unclear on whether your nitrous oxide example actually exists, or whether it would be legal if it did, so I hope you’ll accept these as substitutes). So you’re clearly more accepting of online mob behaviour than me. However, since I also do indeed see the underlying issue here very differently to the way that you do, I can appreciate that I’m unlikely to be in a good position to influence you; I’ve certainly seen this dynamic on the left, many times.
In my final paragraph, I was thinking of a real company known as Galaxy Gas. I was actually considering using Philip Morris in my comparison (I know Nestle is still controversial but I’m not as informed on the current state of that), but I chose Galaxy Gas because it’s such an unambiguously odious brand. Look them up – there are probably companies that cause more harm on a global scale, but Galaxy Gas is just *so* slimy.
I’m sure we won’t change each other’s minds, but I thank you for your responses and the time and thought you put into them. I hope that other readers may take something constructive away from our exchange.
Actually, there's a woke right and it looks an awful lot like the woke left...authoritarian, anti=free speech, anti-censorship. They're also growing in antisemitism. And the two sides merely disagree on who to hate.
Thank you Shadi, this humility in the face of the absurd is exactly what makes this publication worth reading, imo.
One idea even more counter-cultural: posting in these social media streams, while culturally acceptable, is negligent. That was Ms. Louks real mistake.
I'll remind everyone where that the tweeting twit minority, is not real. We should never derive social insights from Twitter.
No, ridiculous ideas do not make you a bad person. But they can make you a ridiculous person and tag you as someone not to be taken seriously.
I don't equate wokeness with ridiculousness, btw -- the latter has a special, within-a-bubble quality that deserves special recognition.
But Shadi's last point ("Not everything is a moral question") is an important one, which could be generalized ("Not everything is crucially connected") far beyond wokeness as an indicator of common sense. Separability is the beginning of wisdom.
I have a limit to how many silly ideas I can handle. I prefer people who aren't too far left or right. I began hanging out with a guy in the 'hood who had a thing for me a few months ago but he was super-conservative and super-Trumpy. I don't mean just a trump Supporter, which I can handle...he kept urging me to vote for Trump and I said I absolutely wasn't gonna do it. Then I talked about the pet-eating thing because I thought we could bond over the humour of it and...he actually believed that shit. I'll admit, I have a lower tolerance for conspiracy theories, at least in a partner, so that was the end of that.
I can be more tolerant for friends rather than potential partners. I have a woke leftie friend who believes the left-wing conspiracy theories but scoffs at the right wing ones. A right-wing friend who believed Obama was the Manchurian Candidate. I had a female friend in CT who thought she and her daughter were being kidnapped by aliens at night when that was a fad. I have a JW neighbour who's prone to suddenly going off about the End Times and how the signs are there...all tolerable since I'm not dating any of them.
This super-Trump dude? he and I would have been fighting about politics within a few months if I hadn't ended it.
I have to wonder about people who respond to a joyful post like that one with hate, regardless of the subject of the dissertation.
That said, when you get beyond the opening of the abstract to the chapter outline the thesis sounds like it may involve interesting close readings, requiring the well-honed skill of noticing what others absorb only subliminally. In other words, it could be quite a good literature thesis marred by politicized jargon. Without reading it with an open mind, you can't know.
Thanks for this piece Shadi :) It's definitely entertained a different angle from much of the defences of her from academics which focuses on the importance of her work. But the bigger and far more interesting question is so what if someone does have silly ideas. These differ from ideas which are pernicious and dangerous in some way I guess where we may make some objection.
Does this reflect where we are and inevitably where we cannot extricate ourselves out of? That tribalism is something we are afflicted with and cannot reason ourselves out of? The internet is merely an extension of this. Given this poor person has been seen doing something not simply silly but extending the dangerous notion of victimhood in academia she has been set upon by those in a different political tribe. To them she is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with these modern institutions exercising social privilege denied to them.
I was wondering what do you think we would need to do to treat others with greater humility and grace?
Mob behavior is the same no matter what belief sets it off, to be sure. However, I don't think it's quite right to conflate ideas shared over a date with a researched dissertation topic that was approved by her credentialed advisors in academia. Are her ideas ridiculous? Maybe. It's also ridiculous that the military can't pass an audit. But it's still not the right word to describe the behavior because of the scale and institutional support. A PhD will keep this person employed. She's not shouting on the curb with a handwritten sign. Of course I hate mobs and I'm sorry this person had to go through anything icky on Twitter. Hard not to end with a smell joke but I will refrain.
"Attack" smells too much of our current woke climate. These are words posted on social media. We can certainly criticize all the actors that lead a young woman has wasted years of her life and the resources or a university to pursue such nonsense, all under "adult" supervision.
Call me woke, but I didn’t find that abstract absurd at all. Translating out of academese, I’d summarise it as:
People use smell as a way of indicating how we ought to see a person. Most obviously, smell can be used to evoke disgust. For example, one way to intensify lower-class depiction can be to say that someone smells dirty. A bit less obviously, smell can be used to indicate desire, including in ways that aren’t actually flattering. Because smell is so visceral, it might even be a particularly effective way of doing this. Accordingly, let’s analyse these dynamics in literature and see how they could affect how we see other people.
Seems reasonable to me. I suspect a lot of people’s reactions are based in a disconnect between the high academic language and the low — indeed, visceral — connotations that smell does indeed have. But, as much as I’d love to dispense with the entire set of expectations that require academics across every discipline to talk so impenetrably, I can’t fault a PhD student for adhering to convention, especially when we’re talking about her thesis abstract, of all things.
Her thesis could actually be quite revealing and possibly profitable. How much do Americans spend on perfume, deodorant, air fresheners, breath mints and mouth wash, and fairly recently laundry deodorizer?
It’s sad a simple post on Social Media spawned the reeking denizens of 𝕏 into a gas-passing frenzy of anonymous swine.
The “woke mobs” and “anti-woke mobs” are not all that analogous.
Ally Louks will be just fine. She’s shown that she’s capable of propagating ridiculous ideas, and since she lives and works in an academic ecosystem that rewards the adherence to and propagation of ridiculous ideas, there is not much that her online detractors can do to her except call out her ridiculousness.
It’s worth noting that “intersectionality” is not a “ridiculous idea” in the sense that, say, believing in Tarot cards is a ridiculous idea. The whole point of Louks’ thesis is to contribute to an intellectual project with the express purpose of deconstructing and subverting norms and institutions which most people value and wish to preserve. Some measure of anger towards those who participate in that project (to the point that it becomes their career) seems justifiable, at least.
Justine Sacco got fired while she was on a plane and completely unaware of her predicament. All this happened, not because she was part of an ecosystem that huge numbers of people rightly view as deleterious to the things they value, but because she tweeted a Jimmy Carr-type joke that did not land.
Do I want any harm to come to Louks? No of course not. But after the past twelve years of leftist nonsense – the sort of nonsense that dissertations such as Louks’ bolsters – I can’t find a violin tiny enough to play.
So, what you’re saying is that Louks is a privileged person who holds views that you consider to be related to a harmful social tendency (even if you can’t directly demonstrate any harm from this specific person), and this means anger against her is justified and you’re not going to sympathise with her for getting attacked over a mild celebratory social media post that would ordinarily have been of no interest to anyone.
Hmm…
I see the parallel you’re attempting to draw, but I don’t find it convincing. Academia is a much more quantifiable institution than “systemic racism” or any of the nebulous leftist boogeymen are.
I wouldn’t call Louks “privileged” any more than I would call a televangelist faith-healer “privileged” for operating in an ideological ecosystem where they remain largely insulated from spoken critiques of said ecosystem.
Louks is participating in a political project. Any person who uses the word “intersectionality” in their dissertation will be the first to tell you that they’d love for their work to have a tangible, material impact on the outside world. Criticizing the public messaging of such an actor is totally fair game imo.
Clearly, you think I’m going about this the wrong way. So I ask of you: how should I go about this? If I think that ridiculous ideas propagated from participants in now-ridiculous institutions have deleterious effects, what is the fair, reasonable response by a person who shares my views?
This particular social media post is not trying to exercise political influence. I think it’s disingenuous to even call it “public messaging,” to be honest, since this implies a message intended for the public, not merely a publicly-available message that was obviously only intended for friends (because why would anyone else care?) You’re deliberately using language and comparisons that inflate her status. Televangelist faith healers have way more money than PhD students, for example, and they are at the top of a hierarchy in a way that PhD students very much are not. So even if you don’t use the word “privilege,” you’re clearly invoking the same kind of “high status equals fair game” reasoning.
Let’s go for a more reasonable comparison. Suppose I think that country clubs are elitist institutions, and that even when they are no longer overtly racist they are still all about preserving social hierarchies. If I see someone saying “hooray, I have obtained Senior Member at the country club” getting attacked on social media, what should I do?
The answer is, obviously, that I should disapprove of the social media attacks, because this is just a random person trying to go about their day. Even if I disagree with their life choices, I shouldn’t want them to be the target of a pile-on, especially not for something so unquestionably mild.
Do you think that the saturation of critical-theory, intersectionality studies, etc, within higher education is a bad trend that facilitates bad outcomes in public policy and civil society? I think it’s bad. If you think it’s a good thing, that’s your business, but it likely means we’re at an impasse.
If you believe that the trend is negative, then I think you have to consider the possibility that criticism of the trend will be pointed towards participants in the trend at all level of the hierarchy. I agree that being a new PhD doesn’t covey a lot of status upon the recipient. Part of the reason we’re in this mess is because of the jarring overproduction of postgrads.
There is no Pope of postmodern nonsense, one single person or machine at which to aim criticism – that’s part of the reason it remains to resilient. Maybe 2% of the people in that ecosystem are the Claudine Gays. The other 98% want to be one of the Claudine Gays.
Re: your question about the country club tweet, of course I would think that attacking a person for such a tweet would be absurd because I think the rationale is absurd. People *do* attack people on Twitter for such things, though – luckily, they’re less successful now than they used to be in the time of Justine Sacco.
My ideal is that it will someday be as unappealing to publicly announce a critical-theory postgrad as it is to enthusiastically announce that you got a job at a company that manufactures nitrous oxide canisters to sell to adolescents. You may disagree, but that’s where I have my sights set.
As with every discussion about social media pile-ons, there will always be an awkward interaction between “how bad is this?” and how bad something has to be before it justifies cruelty to otherwise unremarkable people.
Personally, I don’t think people should generally get piled on for announcing their new job at Philip Morris or Nestle or whatever evil company you want to point to (I’m unclear on whether your nitrous oxide example actually exists, or whether it would be legal if it did, so I hope you’ll accept these as substitutes). So you’re clearly more accepting of online mob behaviour than me. However, since I also do indeed see the underlying issue here very differently to the way that you do, I can appreciate that I’m unlikely to be in a good position to influence you; I’ve certainly seen this dynamic on the left, many times.
In my final paragraph, I was thinking of a real company known as Galaxy Gas. I was actually considering using Philip Morris in my comparison (I know Nestle is still controversial but I’m not as informed on the current state of that), but I chose Galaxy Gas because it’s such an unambiguously odious brand. Look them up – there are probably companies that cause more harm on a global scale, but Galaxy Gas is just *so* slimy.
I’m sure we won’t change each other’s minds, but I thank you for your responses and the time and thought you put into them. I hope that other readers may take something constructive away from our exchange.
Actually, there's a woke right and it looks an awful lot like the woke left...authoritarian, anti=free speech, anti-censorship. They're also growing in antisemitism. And the two sides merely disagree on who to hate.
The problem is if those silly ideas are funded by tax payer money and unconstitutional student loan erasures
Thank you Shadi, this humility in the face of the absurd is exactly what makes this publication worth reading, imo.
One idea even more counter-cultural: posting in these social media streams, while culturally acceptable, is negligent. That was Ms. Louks real mistake.
I'll remind everyone where that the tweeting twit minority, is not real. We should never derive social insights from Twitter.
Get off Twitter folks.
No, ridiculous ideas do not make you a bad person. But they can make you a ridiculous person and tag you as someone not to be taken seriously.
I don't equate wokeness with ridiculousness, btw -- the latter has a special, within-a-bubble quality that deserves special recognition.
But Shadi's last point ("Not everything is a moral question") is an important one, which could be generalized ("Not everything is crucially connected") far beyond wokeness as an indicator of common sense. Separability is the beginning of wisdom.
But who decides what constitutes a “ridiculous” idea?
See the expanded comment.
But to your question, on social media, the mob decides. Elsewhere (as here) the question isn't "decided", it's debated, which is as it should be.
I have a limit to how many silly ideas I can handle. I prefer people who aren't too far left or right. I began hanging out with a guy in the 'hood who had a thing for me a few months ago but he was super-conservative and super-Trumpy. I don't mean just a trump Supporter, which I can handle...he kept urging me to vote for Trump and I said I absolutely wasn't gonna do it. Then I talked about the pet-eating thing because I thought we could bond over the humour of it and...he actually believed that shit. I'll admit, I have a lower tolerance for conspiracy theories, at least in a partner, so that was the end of that.
I can be more tolerant for friends rather than potential partners. I have a woke leftie friend who believes the left-wing conspiracy theories but scoffs at the right wing ones. A right-wing friend who believed Obama was the Manchurian Candidate. I had a female friend in CT who thought she and her daughter were being kidnapped by aliens at night when that was a fad. I have a JW neighbour who's prone to suddenly going off about the End Times and how the signs are there...all tolerable since I'm not dating any of them.
This super-Trump dude? he and I would have been fighting about politics within a few months if I hadn't ended it.
I have to wonder about people who respond to a joyful post like that one with hate, regardless of the subject of the dissertation.
That said, when you get beyond the opening of the abstract to the chapter outline the thesis sounds like it may involve interesting close readings, requiring the well-honed skill of noticing what others absorb only subliminally. In other words, it could be quite a good literature thesis marred by politicized jargon. Without reading it with an open mind, you can't know.
Please punch me in the face if I ever have a non-ridiculous idea.
Thanks for this piece Shadi :) It's definitely entertained a different angle from much of the defences of her from academics which focuses on the importance of her work. But the bigger and far more interesting question is so what if someone does have silly ideas. These differ from ideas which are pernicious and dangerous in some way I guess where we may make some objection.
Does this reflect where we are and inevitably where we cannot extricate ourselves out of? That tribalism is something we are afflicted with and cannot reason ourselves out of? The internet is merely an extension of this. Given this poor person has been seen doing something not simply silly but extending the dangerous notion of victimhood in academia she has been set upon by those in a different political tribe. To them she is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with these modern institutions exercising social privilege denied to them.
I was wondering what do you think we would need to do to treat others with greater humility and grace?
Mob behavior is the same no matter what belief sets it off, to be sure. However, I don't think it's quite right to conflate ideas shared over a date with a researched dissertation topic that was approved by her credentialed advisors in academia. Are her ideas ridiculous? Maybe. It's also ridiculous that the military can't pass an audit. But it's still not the right word to describe the behavior because of the scale and institutional support. A PhD will keep this person employed. She's not shouting on the curb with a handwritten sign. Of course I hate mobs and I'm sorry this person had to go through anything icky on Twitter. Hard not to end with a smell joke but I will refrain.
"Attack" smells too much of our current woke climate. These are words posted on social media. We can certainly criticize all the actors that lead a young woman has wasted years of her life and the resources or a university to pursue such nonsense, all under "adult" supervision.