It’s a female glacier

"Take in this abstract from the obviously mis-named journal Progress in Human Geography:

Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research

Mark Carey, M Jackson, Alessandro Antonello, Jaclyn Rushing

Abstract

Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

"Yes, I too was sure this was a parody, but in fact the lead author is the associate dean at the University of Oregon. Do they really sit around and say, 'Gee—the gender of that glacier is uncertain to me. It might be a trans-glacier, perhaps reversing course in the next cycle. I’ll have to cross-reference it with my post-colonial epistemology thesaurus.'

"Well why not? I notice the recent Paris Agreement on climate change has, among other nonsense, this paragraph:

Acknowledging that climate change is a common concern of humankind, Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity. . .

"This is why you get Trump."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/03/academic-gibberish-watch-we-have-another-winner.php

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/



(I'm still pondering "human-ice interactions."

What did you think she was going to talk about? Making cookies?

First the bona fides: “Jasbir K. Puar is Associate Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999 and an M.A. from the University of York, England, in Women’s Studies in 1993. She has written widely on South Asian disaporic cultural production in the U.S., U.K., and Trinidad; gay and lesbian tourism; terrorist studies; surveillance studies; bio and necropolitics; queer theory; disability and debilitation; theories of intersectionality, affect, and assemblage; animal studies and posthumanism; homonationalism, pinkwashing, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Puar’s forthcoming monograph, States of Debility and Capacity (Duke University Press, 2016) takes up the relations between biopolitics, disability, and forms of active debilitation pivotal to the operations of war machines and racial capitalism. The book will be among the first to appear in a new book series, ANIMA, which she co-edits with Mel Chen (author of Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, Duke University Press, 2012).”

And now her speech topic: Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters. Lecture by Professor Jasbir Puar

“This lecture theorizes oscillating relations between disciplinary, pre-emptive, and increasingly prehensive forms of power that shape human and non-human materialities in Palestine. Calculation, computing, informational technologies, surveillance, and militarization are all facets of prehensive control. Further, the saturation of spatial and temporal stratum in Palestine demonstrates the use of technologies of measure to manufacture a “remote control” occupation, one that produces a different version of Israeli “home invasions” through the maiming and stunting of population. If Gaza, for example, is indeed the world’s largest “open air prison” and an experimental lab for Israeli military apparatuses, infrastructural chaos, and metric manipulation, what kinds of fantasies (about power, about bodies, about resistance, about politics) are driving this project?”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/02/todays-outstanding-academic-gibberish.php

Link at: http://politicalhat.com/2016/02/07/news20160207/

It’s a good thing I got’s me a degree, elsewise I wouldn’t understand Zionist use of oscillating relations against downtrodden Palestinians.