Wednesday, September 14, 2005

"Televisual"

Aw, y'all, I came so close to finally being an insufferable smarty-pants by inventing the word "televisual" and then using it in a sentence at work. Then I googled it and it turns out, I didn't actually invent the word "televisual," but that it's been an obvious insufferable smarty-pants construction since, well, since there's been television. That's good because once you start coining your own nonsense jargon, you're just a short step away from simplisticly quoting Foucault. Well, in truth, you don't actually have to quote Foucault because the number of people who've actually read Foucault is approximately 63. The rest of us are just pretending to have read Foucault when really we've just read what other people pretending to read Foucault have written. Therefore, it's very easy to pretend that you are an insufferable smarty-pants. Just follow these simple rules.

1. Create a seemingly plausible fake word--like 'televisual.' 2. Make some off-handed reference to Foucault. 3. Use either "hegemony" or "praxis" or both, if you can. 4. Reference some dead guy most people have heard of--usually Aristotle or Nietzsche.

Now, combine those elements into a sentence:

"In order to overcome the hegemony imposed by the Aristotelian world-view, it's necessary to create a new, more Foucaltvian praxis more in line with our televisual age." You throw shit like that around, you'll be standing in front of undergraduate classes in short order and working your way into grad students' pants in no time. Note: it's not necessary to even know what 'hegemony' or 'praxis' means. I don't know what they mean. I have to keep calling the Professor and reading sentences out loud to her to make sure they actually make sense, and they still let me use them.

3 Comments:

Blogger Kat Coble said...

Number of people who've read "The Order of Things" is probably about 63.

Number of people who've read "History of Sexuality" is probably a bit higher.

9/14/2005 06:18:00 PM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

I have nothing to say, but the password to this post is "ibeggs"

It sounds like a real word, unlike the qyxxvtlp crap I've had to enter all over the internet.


It sounds like a cute name for a mechanical dog.

iBeggs.

So anyway. I had to use the comment form.

9/14/2005 09:20:00 PM  
Blogger melusina said...

ibeggs is the Mac version

You are too funny Aunt. B

9/15/2005 09:21:00 AM  

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