The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense
"Have you ever wanted to impress your friends with your erudition and sophistication? Are you edgy enough that you could pass muster as an innovative and original thinker, if only you knew what to say? If so, this is the book for you. Within a few short minutes, you’ll have learnt all you could surely want to know about the thoughts and language of the world’s most fashionable intellectuals. Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, even Alain de Botton, they’re all here.
The world, of course, is full of fashionable nonsense. Feng Shui, pilates, Naomi Campbell, Pop Idol, Manolo Blahnik footwear, the list is endless. However, this dictionary is concerned with one particular species of fashionable nonsense, the kind found in certain unswept corners of academia.
Have you ever wanted to know what phrases like scopic drive, subversive performativity, hegemonic discourse mean? No? Well that’s sensible, and fortunately this book won’t tell you. What it will tell you, however, is how to salt them into your conversation should you ever be trapped at a party with a crowd of trendy academics.
So here you have an ironic user’s guide, a slim volume of cod pedantry. It offers an array of ludicrous, exaggerated, self-contradicting definitions and explanations of jargon popular amongst trendy academics and intellectuals. The result is very funny. But there is a serious thought here; much of the language in question is in the service of ideas that are not only silly and wrong, but also bad and harmful. This book is a contribution to the fight back on behalf of reason and truth.
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dictionary-Fashionable-Nonsense-Guide-People/dp/0285637142