Project H.O.A.E., Part VI: Answer the Age Old Question "What Is JSTOR?"

The (obviously) acronym'd after-the-fact Project. How to Open an Academic Essay (H.O.A.E.) continues today with a strange entry from the Journal of Historical Sociology.  "Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals" by Geoffrey M. Hodgson begins with a description of Diego Rivera's massive 1934 fresco "Man at the Crossroads."*  Rivera arrayed his symbols of liberation on the "colorful right of the picture," but

To the darker left of the mural ar sinister battalions of marching gas-masked soldiers, the ancient statue of a fearsome god, and the seated figure of a bearded Charles Darwin.

BAM!  Hodgson nailed that opening.  Gas masked soliders, fearsome gods, and a feeble old Darwin, leaning forward, undeserving martyr to Communist mythology.  The article continues with a brief outline of the history of the term "Social Darwinism," followed by this:

This essay takes advantage of JSTOR an electronic database of leading academic journals in anthropology, economics, general science, history, literature, philosophy, political science, population studies, sociology and other subjects, which has become available in the 1990s.  These journals are almost entirely in English and several date back to the time of Darwin.  A search was made for the terms "Social Darwinism," "Social Darwinist" or "Social Darwinists" in articles or reviews.

I must admit, I'm overjoyed that someone (who works, according to footnote 4, with "R. Bannister") has done my research for me.  While it's beyond wonderful to have an organized, essentially annotated  list of all the references to social darwinism in the JSTOR database, the thing about it is: I already had one.  Because I had made one.  So too, I suppose, had every scholar working on social darwinism since it became widely available in 1995.  The pressing question for a certain unpublished academic I know is "How did someone else publish my background research as a scholarly article?"  Equally pressing is its corollary, "Why didn't my advisors recommend I submit my background research to an academic journal?"

*Hodgson probably meant "Man, Controller of the Universe," since the almost identical "Man at the Crossroads" had been destroyed in 1933. 

Comments

[Stephen]

The reason is that each discipline has its own variety of bullshit. What you've stumbled across is an example of sociological bullshit. Sociological bullshit consists of "reviews of existing scholarship" and bogus pseudo-scientific survey studies that prove what everyone else already knew. Pure c.v. filler. Biological and medical bullshit consists of lots and lots of unimaginative experiments with rats that repeat other researchers' experiments with rats. ("Yep, Prof. X and his team were right - 900 volts does fry the little guys). Literary bullshit, . . . well, you already know all about literary bullshit. Whatever horrible things you can say about literary bullshit, at least it doesn't kill little rats. I like rats. Mind you, literary bullshit is particularly effective at killing braincells, which is arguably just as bad. However, unless you're a graduate student taking a seminar with a tenured bullshit artist, you have a choice about whether or not to have your braincells killed by literary studies (i.e., step away from the Homi Bhabha). Whereas those little rats are pretty much fucked.

[Stephen]

Yes, but Stephen, I think you've missed an important distinction. Bullshit consists of false claims that mislead both the reader and the author himself. A philosopher named Harry Frankfurt has written a treatise on the subject, which I'm surprised you haven't read. Anyhow, what Acephalous is describing isn't bullshit, in contrast, say, to Homi Bhabha. We need a new word for Hodgson's efforts, and for the efforts of your rat-killing medical researchers. I would suggest "Bullbarf." I.e., it's essentially regurgitory rather than obfuscatory.

[Stephen]

You two guys need to get back to your dissertation, or else it's going to turn into a particularly noxious combination of Bullshit and Bullbarf.

[Stephen]

How can I get any work done when you guys keep running away with my identity?