In 1996, the journal Social Text published an essay by physicist Alan Sokal titled, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Purporting to connect emerging physics and future-math with postmodern theory, it was actually a hoax. The paper is a bunch of nonsense designed as a mockery of the whole jerk-off of deconstructionism (speaking as someone once mildly obsessed with deconstructionism), intended to demonstrate that a leading journal in the field would take a bunch of garbage if it sounded enough like proper postmodernism and if “it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions,” in Sokal’s words. Indeed it did.
TED culture isn’t stuck in quite the infinite loop as cultural studies/lit theory, but it often involves similar amounts of excruciating privilege, jargon, and self-congratulations. In the year 2013 it’s not hard to find a TED takedown, yet not so much a Sokal-esque parodic infiltration, at least until sketch comedian Sam Hyde made his way into a TEDx program a couple of weeks ago at Drexel University with a program titled, "2070 Paradigm Shift."
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