Fashionable Dictionary
Soon to be available from all good bookstores (more than 500 entries)!
 A
Acceptance
Nice, warm, cooperative way of evaluating ideas, much better than argument.
Accuracy
Exploded concept. Foolish, Platonic notion that we can get our facts straight.
Alphabet
The opposite of the Goddess. "But one pernicious effect of literacy has gone largely unnoticed: writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women's power in the culture." [Leonard Shlain, The Goddess and the Alphabet]
Alternative
A wonderful thing. Because it's the opposite of everything. You have the regular, normal, boring thing, like medicine, or scholarship, or education, and then you have the alternative kind, which does whatever the opposite is. Normal medicine relies on testing, so dear alternative medicine relies on guesswork and hunches and an inner voice. So much more spiritual.
Argument
Unpleasant, testosterone-driven method of supporting one's assertions, to be avoided in favour of acceptance.
Aristotle
A famous thief. Stole all his ideas from the library at Alexandria, built after his death, which just goes to show how sneaky he was.
Armchair
All-purpose adjective meaning: lazy, unhealthy, indoor, cowardly ("armchair general"), bookish, abstract, arbitrary, invented, and different from what I think, as in "armchair philosopher," "armchair anthropologist," etc.
Assertion
1. Essential technique, replacing the need for argument and evidence.
2. To be greeted with acceptance, rather than argument.
Assumption
Something to be examined when it is our opponent's and taken for granted when it is our own.
B
Bacon
Horrible man, obsessed with raping Nature. Control freak.
Bashing
Criticising something that I approve of.
Bigot
Someone who believes something I don't believe. See fanatic.
Binary
Terrible, dreadful, shocking word for a truly appalling way to think. Makes everything separate. That must not be. We are all One. Everything is One.
Book
Wrong word to use; must say text.
Burgess
Famous snail. Prison interrupted a short career in MI5. Wrote Clockwork Orange from behind bars. See evolution.
Burt, Cyril
The man who showed how science is really done.
Bustle
Outmoded fashion. Similar to codpiece but worn on the other side. See truth.
C
Canon, the
A mysterious document (which no one has ever seen) drawn up (no one knows when) in secrecy by a tiny conspiracy (no one knows where) of deceased European males dictating what everyone must read.
Cat
Quadruped that can look at a King (see Royalty; Prince
Charles). Never cries and has no attitude to love whatsoever
(see Dog;
Elephant).
Catastrophism
A theory describing what occurs when we're asked to explain our ideas clearly.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1977 documentary about intergalactic tourism, narrated by Richard Dreyfuss.
Close Encounters of the Third Way
1977 documentary, narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, which sees Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair meet intergalactic tourists whist on George Bush's ranch in Texas.
Comfortable
A word to use instead of 'agree with', 'accept', 'understand'. 'Doctors have become more comfortable with alternative medicine'. This is useful in subtly training us to replace out of date ways of assessing truth-claims such as logic and evidence with the idea of a nice sofa.
Credulity
A great virtue.
Crop circles
A good thing all around. Because circles are good, obviously,
being about infinity and arguing around and around and wholeness. And crops
are good as long as they're not GM crops or high yield or Mono - but if
they're good innocent clean colourful crops they're a fine thing. So
obviously the two together are even better: if they were just plain,
ordinary crop circles they would already be wonderful, and since they're
magical and spiritual and apparently made either by extraterrestrials or by
reincarnated Druids - naturally they're a good thing squared, or cubed.
D
Darwin, Charles
Primarily an economist, who happened upon the theory of evolution after dabbling on the stock exchange. 'Darwin's whole theory of evolution by natural selection bears an uncanny resemblance to the political economic theory of early capitalism...Darwin had some knowledge of the economic survival of the fittest because he earned his living from investment in shares he followed daily in the newspapers. What Darwin did was take early-nineteenth century political economy and expand it to include all of natural economy.' [Richard Lewontin, Biology as Ideology]
Dead Rabbits Society
Brilliant film starring Robin Williams that deconstructed education, class, the teaching of literature, and introductions to poetry books.
Defensive
Adjective for someone who insists on disagreeing with me, and goes on disagreeing even after I've said how right I am.
Demonising
Sharply criticising something that I approve of.
Determinism
1. Irrevocable when biological. Not so when environmental.
2. An accusation. Normally paired with its twin, reductionist. No need to understand what either of these mean.
Dialectical biology
A kind of biology done by people who speak non-standard varieties of English, which are just as good as the standard, no, better, because not so elitist, so the biology is better too.
Dice
God's favourite toy. Mention when talking about quantum things.
Difficult
Disciplines like physics, math, engineering, which is why I don't want to do them.
Dispositif
Like discourse only bigger.
Doubt
A corrosive poison.
Dream
Freud explained them. Whatever they seem to be about, they're about sex and wanting to kill people really. Except they're also messages from the Beyond or from extra-terrestrials.
E
E=MC2
Probably a sexed equation, the product of a male obssession with speed. 'Is e=mc2 a sexed equation?...Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest...' [Luce Irigaray, Le sujet de la science est-il sexue?]
Edge
A thing it is necessary to be on the cutting part of.
Edgy
Hip, now, happenin', cool. Not old news, vieux jeu, stale, last week, last Thursday.
Education
Brutal, violent intrusion of arbitrary material into the clean innocent heads of children, which should be left empty.
Elephant
Large mammal that cries a lot.
Elitist
Someone who knows more than I do.
Empiricism
Absurd notion that observation and measurement are useful in getting to know about things (see positivism).
Enlightenment
Sinister, destructive period of history which had a 'project' to dominate nature, prefer reason to superstition, and stop going to church. All a big mistake, but postmodernism will fix it.
Evidence
1. Something that can be tailored to the requirements of my arguments.
2. A tiresome thing that may conflict with something that I believe.
Evolution
Something to do with a snail called Burgess. Occurred only during the Cambrian period. Punctuated.
Exclusion
What happens when you use judgment, logic, linear thinking, reason, argument. Very bad and unkind thing to do, especially for women, who are by nature caring and loving, except when we argue with biological determinists, when they're not.
F
Fanatic
Someone who strongly believes something I don't believe.
Fashion
Important ethical principle. Something that is behind the times is very wrong indeed.
Flow
What to go with.
Fluid
A female thing. Blood, milk, sweat, tears. All exclusive to women. This explains why men are engineers and women work in dairies, laundries, and Mills and Boon.
Foo Co.
Chinese clock repair company.
Force
A thing you want with you.
Freud
Though he did have some unfortunate ideas about women, he discovered the Unconscious, despite the many people who had pointed out its existence before, so we have to keep paying homage to him.
G
Gödel
A man with a theorem. Has something to do with axioms. Importantly, shows that everything is relative. To be invoked with quantum things.
Genes
Do very little. Can be ignored. Not selfish, kind.
Genetic drift
Occurs in humans after a mutation of the gene for swimming (thought to have accounted for the demise of Shelley).
Goddess
Good, powerful, wise. Until the alphabet came along and ruined everything.
Gut
A good part of the body to think with, but not the best. See heart.
H
Hard Drive
1) Important bit of computer.
2) Psychic pressure to perform a rigidly butch, essentialist version of maleness.
Head
The wrong part of the body to think with.
Heart
The right part of the body to think with. See head.
Hokey
What to call gibberish when it has been revealed that you just published it.
Holistic
Everything good. Whole, pure, sincere, whole, integrated, spiritual, whole, centered.
Horst Wessel song
Rumoured to be the song that some sociobiologists most like to sing.
Human Gnome Project
Most likely something to do with genetic engineering. Probably the idea is to create a new race of tiny human beings.
Human nature
Fantasy. Fictitious entity, like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy or the free lunch. Humans have no nature, only culture; we can learn to fly, or live in the ocean, or echolocate, or pick things up with our trunks, if we will only concentrate.
Humanist
Good thing to be, better than being a rockist or a machinist.
I
Identical twins
Not identical at all. Chalk and cheese.
Ideology
Ideas we don't agree with. Probably exploitative.
Inclusion
The best attitude to everything, including ideas. Accept, welcome, embrace, be kind.
Inclusive
Very very nice thing to be. Loving and accepting of everyone, except of course linear thinkers, reductionists, determinists and anyone else whose opinions are dangerous.
Incompleteness
A theorem that proves everything is incomplete (see relativity, quantum) anyway, so I can leave my projects unfinished. See Gödel.
Instinct
A very bad thing when we're discussing evolution, genetics, human nature, but a very good thing when we're discussing women's different ways of knowing.
Intolerance
Subjecting my assertions or beliefs to criticism.
Intuition
A technique for coming to know things about the world. Most fruitfully employed by women. See heart.
Is/Ought gap
A good place to buy jeans, or do I mean genes.
J
Jeremiad
Oration or polemic that attacks something I don't want to see attacked.
Joke
Rare (requires sense of humour). In fact, I don't see the point of them at all, really.
Judgment
Bad, wicked, excluding, discriminatory attitude to other people's ways of knowing.
Jung
The right kind of scientist, one with insight and intuition and spiritual albeit highly implausible ideas, such as the Collective Unconscious.
K
Knowing
Something women have a special way of.
Knowledge
A human convention subject to fashion, so likely to become out of date quickly, like clothes and shoes and hair styles.
L
Light
Zip, zip, zip. It's man's favourite natural phenomenon. See E=MC2.
Linear thinking
Unfortunate, controlling, impoverished, male variety of thinking that's all hung up on logic, evidence, chronology, causation, and pedantic in-the-head stuff like that.
Literally
How to take scientists when they claim they're talking metaphorically.
Logic
Pestiferous male invention. Probably something to do with imperialism, too.
Lyotard
Very important French philosopher. Invented postmodernism. Nothing to do with aerobics.
M
Marxism
1. Probably not true, but it should be.
2. Useful for understanding dialectical biology.
Mead, Margaret
Anthropologist who showed once and for all that humans are infinitely variable, depending on where they live. She studied cultures in the Pacific Ocean somewhere in which men took care of babies, cooked, and put ribbons in their hair, and women cut down trees, killed animals, and spat.
Measurement
Tedious, pedantic activity engaged in by scientists because they have nothing better to do. They need to get a life.
Metaphor
Scientists never talk metaphorically (see Freud and literally)
Microscope
A tool that scientists use to peer at tiny powerless things which are none of their business.
Midgley, Mary
A philosopher who proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that genes don't have emotions (see Quixote, Don).
Mrs Aristotle
Now believed to have written most of the works of the famous ideas thief Aristotle. She lived in Alexandria, and wrote when not cooking, cleaning, doing the school-run, visiting the gym, etc.
Mystery
A beautiful thing. Mystery is always better than understanding. The more obscure everything is, the better.
N
Narrative
It's all narrative. Get real, of course it is. All that stuff about evidence and logic is just window dressing, we all know that. Just a way for scientists to puff up their pathetic little egos. They're just spinning a tale like everyone else.
Natural selection
Occurred in the gaps between meteorites.
Nature
A beautiful, spiritual thing, to be treated with great respect, except when we really do need to buy a Sport Utility Vehicle, but Nature will understand.
Newton
Like Bacon, an advocate of raping Nature. Also a pitiful has-been. Inventor of a pathetic outdated unhip linear kind of mathematics and astronomy-type thing that worked okay for a couple of centuries but has now been completely left behind because during the time that everyone was so fed-up after the 1914-1918 War, the Zeitgeist came up with quantum mechanics, and after that poor old Newton looked very very obsolete indeed. Shows you can never be too careful about keeping up.
Nitpicking
What to accuse people of when they say you have your facts wrong.
O
Obfuscation
Useful move when talking to people who know more than you do.
Opinion
Everything. Often confused, by prepostmodern people, with entities like truth, reality, the world. "That's just your opinion," is the approved rebuke in such cases.
Opinion Polling Organisations
Set up to tell people what to think. Apparently it runs in families.
P
Paradigm
A thing that shifts, thus proving that scientists merely make up their findings.
Penis Envy
Not mine, you wouldn't.
Perspective
Everybody has one, therefore nothing that anyone says is true. Or false. Except of course what I just said - that is true, but it is the only thing that is true. Or is there maybe one other thing...no, no, that's the only one.
Polyphemus
A favoured role model from Ancient Greece. Had an eye for the ladies.
Positivism
The insane, harmful, elitist idea that one should have some evidence before deciding something is true (see empiricism).
Power
Everything, even things that don't seem to be, in fact them all the more. Literature, opera, clothes, whips, chains - all simply power in disguise. Everything is power in disguise except when it's money, or oil, or sex, or self-interest, or cigars.
Q
Quantum
First name of various ideas that no one understands, least of all scientists, so it makes a great metaphor for chaos, complexity, relativity, randomness, Postmodernity, and just about anything one needs a metaphor for.
Quibble
What people are doing when they say I'm wrong about something. Not to be used when I say people are wrong about something. See Nitpicking.
Quixote, Don
A hero, he fought a giant suspected of biological determinism.
R
Rand, Ayn
Hollywood screenwriter, later writer of huge thick novels, then a philosopher, but for some reason I can never find her in the philosophy reference books I look in. Maybe I have the spelling wrong.
Reason
Bad, toxic entity, that foolish people use when they ought to use their inner voice, or angels, or intuition, or a gut feeling, or their hearts, or the I Ching.
Reductionism
Reducing something we like to something we don't (genes primarily)
Relativity
What Einstein had a very special theory of, which means that it's all, like, relative.
Religion
1. Organised religion not all that good, oppressive and, well, organised, except of course when it's other people's organised religion, in the Third World and so on, and Third World people in the First World, or is that the right thing to call them, anyway I'm spiritual rather than religious, but it's all the same thing really, and we're all One.
2. Another word for science.
Repressive
A feature of things like reason, linear thinking, logic and other forms of patriarchal, hegemonic, phallogocentric discourse. Not liberatory. 'Like postmodern social theory, postmodern science sees modernity and modern reason as inherently repressive.' [Steven Best, 'Chaos and Entropy: Metaphors in Postmodern Science and Social Theory']
Rousseau
So much nicer than that awful Bacon, even though he did hand all his children over to an orphanage because he couldn't be bothered. At least he didn't want to rape Nature.
S
Samoa
The place to come of age.
Schizophrenia
A different way of seeing the world. Invented by Thomas Szasz.
Schrödinger's Cat
Half alive; half undead. A vampire moggy.
Science
1. An inconvenient discipline that tends to undermine our most cherished beliefs.
2. A tiny cabal of powerful people who ignore what the majority of humanity believe.
3. A civil religion.
4. Part of the ideological state apparatus. Science "like the Church before it, is a supremely social institution, reflecting and reinforcing the dominant values and views of society at each historical epoch." [Richard Lewontin, Biology as Ideology]
Scientist
1. Wicked, elitist, narrow-minded member of tiny unelected aristocracy which does not share the beliefs of the great majority of people. "How can metaphysical life [New Age] theories and explanations taken seriously by millions be ignored or excluded by a small group of powerful people called 'scientists'?" [Andrew Ross, Strange Weather]
2. A bourgeois, legitimator of capitalist exploitation. "Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology." [Lewontin, Kamin and Rose, Not in our Genes] See Starbucks.
3. A dull, plodding, unimaginative person who only knows how to count things; a bore; a geek, a nerd, a swot, a grind.
Seems
A word to use where something really doesn't seem to be the case, but it would be unseemly to admit it. For example: "It certainly seems like Luce Irigaray has a good point to make"; or "Starbucks seems to be responsible for world starvation, George Bush and cappuccino".
Self-esteem
What children go to school to learn. The curriculum.
Sheep
More attractive than you might think, really.
Sidestep
A maneuver to make a virtue of when you don't know how to answer an objection. 'Plainly the social constructivist argument has its limitations, because it ends in relativism...I find that the most enlivening philosophical work tries to sidestep that set of philosophical traps...' [Donna Haraway, Interview, Socialist Review 21, no. 2]
Significant
Adjective to use of work that you suspect is not well-founded or even sane, but is by someone on your side.
Socrates
A famous African philosopher.
Sokal
1. A bad man.
2. Adjective to use in front of silly words, as in 'sokalled reason', 'sokalled science', 'sokalled evidence'.
Solid
A male thing. Not female. Obviously. See fluid.
Soul
Well, not exactly sure, sort of an outdated idea really, but it's kind of unspiritual to say so, and anyway it refers to something, though I don't exactly know what. Kind of the part of us that positivists and scientists and reductionists and people like that leave out, the part that can't be measured and is a little mysterious.
Spiritual
What to call a belief that perhaps is not terribly plausible or even possible but makes people feel special and magical.
Starbucks
A place where scientists drink coffee.
Story
What everything is, really, when you come right down to it. Science, history (see?), religion, mathematics, engineering--it's all a story.
Strong programme
A dynamic aerobic (see Lyotard) workout routine developed by the sociology department at the University of Edinburgh. Enables robust, muscle-bound, butch sociologists to dominate and frighten weak, timid, nerdy scientists.
Superstition
An elitist, intolerant word used by narrow-minded linear thinkers and positivists for deeply spiritual beliefs held by billions of people.
T
Telescope
An instrument that scientists use to look at things that are so big and far away that no one cares about them.
Text
Word it is mandatory to use instead of book; book very wrong indeed; must never never say book; everyone will stare if not laugh. Book elitist, hierarchical, last week, etc.
Thinking
A suspect and risky activity. The Nazis had a saying, 'to think is already to doubt.' It's a shame it was the Nazis who said it, because it is so true.
Threatened
Adjective modifying people who fail to be impressed by the bold rebellious transgressive ideas that I adhere to.
Thus
A useful word to insert between two arbitrary assertions, thus making both appear to be vaguely justified. 'Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it.' Edward Said, Orientalism
Tolerance
Believing whatever I say, with no questions asked.
Topology
A kind of mathematics that deals with the way things look from very high places. Also called 'peak dynamics'.
Transgressive
Desperate for attention, or publication, or tenure, or promotion, or all those. The route to solid bourgeois comfort in the academy is via being as transgressive as Madonna on speed.
Truth
A quaint, old-fashioned word, like bustle or barouche-landau or button-hook. No longer needed.
U
Universities
Factories for the production of capitalist ideology. "Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology...If biological determinism is a weapon in the struggle between classes, then the universities are weapons factories, and their teaching and research faculties are the engineers, designers, and production workers." [Lewontin, Kamin and Rose, Not in Our Genes]
V
Voice
Something women have a different one of.
W
Watership Down
Film with interesting ideas about global warming, rising sea levels, apocalypse, and such, but Kevin Costner went so over budget that it never really had a chance.
Whiggish
A useful pejorative to indicate a fatuously optimistic portrayal of a subject one wants to attack. So a "whiggish history of science" is one that mistakenly considers science a good thing.
Will to Believe
Something William James discovered, so we can all believe whatever we want to, and you can't stop us.
X
X
The source of special knowledge, intuition, warmth, niceness, and gossip.
Y
Y
The source of logic, linear thinking, analysis, football, war, and not talking about Feelings; probably a mistake.
Z
Zarathustra
A super man.
Zeitgeist
Something it is everyone's first duty to be in touch with. See fashion, edge.
Zen
The best way to do most things. Just kind of like let it happen, man.
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