Remember back when talking shit was simpler? If you wanted to dis someone in the schoolyard, all you had to do was call them a dumb crap head and throw your chocolate milk at them. Alas, those days are gone forever, but the urge to do exactly that yet remains. To make any such juvenile accusation in the academic or professional workspace would be not only inappropriate, but actually undermine your point. Why can’t we just bring back the wedgie?
But, compadres, to quote Arwen, there is still hope. Capy is going to explain…
How to destroy your intellectual opponents in a civilized, dignified manner
1. Use the broadest definition of terms possible.
Let’s take a popular example: imperialism. The first definition at dictionary.com reads ” the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.”
Now, terms like imperialism and colonialism are fraught with historical baggage, nearly all of which is negative, which makes them perfect weapons. You can easily to apply them to nearly any foreign policy situation with devastating effect.
For example, the US in Iraq? Colonialism! Russian in Chechnya? Imperialism! That will shut your opponents right up (who wants to be labeled an imperialist?) without all the strenuous thought that goes along with actual debate.
*Caution* This tactic is tried and true, so be wary that your opponent may call you out on this tactic. Luckily, there is a sure and easy solution: add the word “neo” to the front of any of the above. While people with any historical knowledge may question your use of the word “imperial,” no one knows what the hell neo-imperialism is; it can be whatever you want it to be!
In certain contexts you can also use “communist” or “neoconservative” in this same fashion (though I wouldn’t recommend neo-neoconcervative, and have never tried neo-communist, but you could probably get away with it).
2. Employ accusations that can’t be argued against
There are a couple of terms floating around there (especially, but not only, in anthropological circles) that are simply foolproof. Capy will now alert you to some of the best.
– Call someone an orientalist. The beauty of this accusation is that anytime someone says or writes anything about a country outside Europe or America they can be an orientalist without even realizing it. Take advantage of this fact. Once you throw out this label, they will be on the defensive so fast that they won’t even have time to wrap their head around the implications of what you just said.
– Another good one is “euro-centric.” If your opponent is from Europe or America, how can they possibly argue that their opinion isn’t somehow touched by centuries of European cultural bias?
(Note: if your opponent is not from either Europe or America, they are essentially immune to both of these accusation)
– If you really want to get dirty, you can just imply that your opponent is only making an argument because of his or her (sex, socioeconomic background, race, etc.). This tactic is dangerous because you risk all sorts of accusations, but if you do it underhandedly enough, and phrase it as a question, you should be fine. “Does it occur to you that the reason you hadn’t considered A, B, or C is because of your privileged background growing up in Rhode Island?”
3. Use words that don’t make sense, are obscure, or are extremely nebulous in meaning (preferably all three)
If they don’t know what the hell you are talking about, they can’t really argue back. And if they try, they are even more screwed because you can just use a different meaning of said word.
An ideal candidate is the term “teleology.” Read the Wikipedia article if you really give a shit what it means (there is no reason you should, you can bullshit with the term just fine based on my explanation here). Basically, any time anyone tries to explain why something turned out one way instead of another, they can easily be accused of making “teleological assumptions” for asking the question.
For instance, if I ask why Frodo didn’t fall to the darkside (err… so to speak) and Smeagul did, you could easily say: “Isn’t that a teleological question, Capy? Are you implying that just because one hobbit like creature was seduced by the One True Ring, that is the only way the history of Middle Earth could have progressed?”
If, on the off chance, your opponent has an idea of what teleology means, just pick another definition or make one up. If you say it with confidence, they won’t know the difference. If he or she is a professor of teleology, just give him a wedgie and go kill yourself for living in a world where people can actually specialize in something like that.
Note: While the terms and strategies described above are in the context of taking down your academic or professional rival, they also work very well for disguising the fact that you don’t know what the hell you are talking about in an academic paper (for example).
Wisdom of the Capybara 
February 16, 2007 at 7:09 am
How do I describe my feelings about this post? Terror. Sheer terror. I spent almost three months in college considering the meaning of the word, “teleology.” Orientalism is one of my biggest interests in life. Further, I believe everything anyone says is related to (though not determined by) race, religion, economic status, etc. Also hair color, eye color, height, etc. Terror. Sheer teleologic al terror.
February 16, 2007 at 4:49 pm
TS,
I thought this post might piss you off a bit, TS. Don’t read too much into it though. It was meant to be sarcastic, but I don’t actually think a lot of these terms are completely worthless. In fact, I think terms like “teleological” and “orientalism” are rather useful in some circumstance.
That said, among the reasons I wrote this (other than just to be a jackass) was to point out that these terms are very frequently misused. I think this mis-usage is doubly irresponsible when it is done to shut down reasoned debate, which actually happens all the time. It used to be a favorite tactic of the right (call someone a commy during the Cold War, end of conversation), but now I see it used much more often on the left.
I am sure you are right about this; naturally, who we are affects what we say. This is not my critique. My critique is when people attempt to nullify what someone else says using arguments like this. I.e., “You just think that because you are a man.” Statements such as that are patently stupid, because the reverse is inevitably true as well.
Again, take this post with a grain of salt.
February 20, 2007 at 12:15 am
I agree with the above and despite my interest, you’ll notice I rarely use those words except in circumstances when the conversation would be better for having used them.
Now, especially with regards to the cross-cultural vocab: orientalism and euro-centricism. Accusing someone of orientalism, in my opinion, is like accusing someone of biology, or political science. Accusing someone of euro-centrism is something slightly different, but it falls in the same category as accusing someone of verbal racism. If you push it too hard, you end up with that evil of all evils, political correctness: legal documents should be politically correct, not people. People should speak from the heart, not from the thoughtless abyss of political correctness.
As for features. I think that when it comes right down to it, everything we do or think results from some prior experience or some sociological/physical feature, but again, there are so many prior experiences and so many features and they each inform everything that we say. In that light, it becomes idiocy to accuse someone of thinking something because of, say, manhood. One may as well say, “You just think that because you are a human being.”
However, sometimes things are euro-centric or America-centric, or more generally ethnocentric and no one notices. Sometimes, the mind constructs of the orient and the occident have a bad relationship with each other. Sometimes a person doesn’t consider something because that person is not, as per example above, a woman.
I think your critique is good and it made me laugh. I just wanted to make sure the point was made that if someone is creating an argument rather than shooting down a counter argument, each of the concepts above is useful.
My own personal nemesis is the ideologue, dark jedi that they are. The ideologue takes every tool I have at my disposal, makes everyone hate the sound of the them by being painfully obnoxious at length and then basically leaves me stranded on a foreign continent seeking an education the ideologue made impossible for me during college (Am I like a taller version of Yoda?, no not as cool, though I often struggle just as much as him to get my point across, poor guy… what was I talking about? Oh right.).
Its a good post, I’m glad you made it, but its a post that basically begged a caustic response from me. Its like saying, “Hey, remember Anakin?” to Obi Wan Kinobi.
February 20, 2007 at 11:00 pm
“CapyBoppy Says:
February 16th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I think this mis-usage is doubly irresponsible when it is done to shut down reasoned debate, which actually happens all the time. It used to be a favorite tactic of the right (call someone a commy during the Cold War, end of conversation), but now I see it used much more often on the left.”
I don’t believe this is true. Shutting down debate in this manner is a basic argumentative instinct that knows no political boundaries. It is certainly true that you see this tactic used by the left disproportionately on college campuses, but let us not forget that the vast majority of college students are at least moderately leftist. If you did a per capita study, I’d guess that there would be no correlation between “shutting down” and lefties. If there was a correlation, then I believe it would be more likely explained by the general tendency of majorities to marginalize minority viewpoints (republican views on college campuses).
The right certainly engages in a plethora of their own shutting down tactics: Being labeled “unpatriotic” or “not supporting troops” shuts down any valid leftist criticism of foreign policy (I’ll never forget being called the “homegrown Taliban” by Dinesh DeSouza at UCLA). Being labeled “soft on crime” shuts down any valid criticism of our criminal justice system. Perhaps most interesting in my opinion is the somewhat ironic status of “political correctness”. These days the term is actually a pejorative that is often used to shut down any valid criticism that a lefty might have of racism/homophobia/sexism/whateverism in our society.
February 21, 2007 at 1:08 am
SaggyLam,
All very fair points that I mostly agree with. However, most of the terms I list above are by nature academic. The academic establishment is, I think we can all agree, very liberal to say the least (not that there is anything wrong with that, necessarily). Hence, on campuses (as you note) the left is the side resorting to these tactics.
This is just adding another explanation to your point that my gripe applies mostly to college campuses. Of course, that is the perspective most of us are most familiar with, so it is easy (as I did) not to step back and think about the broader context.
In a side note, the unpatriotic thing is so ridiculous that I hear the Bush administration back peddling from that accusation more than I hear them making it (“it is not unpatriotic to disagree, but the dems need to propose alternatives” etc). I is more the right-wing commentators and think tank wackos.
Finally,
True, but the reason it became a pejorative term is still alive and well, and at the very least still equally responsible for the squelching of reasoned debate. I see what you are saying though.
February 21, 2007 at 1:29 am
Saggy,
Apparently Dinesh D’Souza was on the Colbert Report, but I can’t find a link to the actual video, just this reference: http://www.nofactzone.net/?p=775
Did you see the episode? Getting called a “homegrown Taliban” by that guy is a badge of honor!