I Denounce Your White Geometry
Tyson E Lewis, a professor of art education at the University of North Texas, fires his wisdom into our minds:
Lewis posits that there is a “corporeal geometry of whiteness,” and that what emerges from his analysis “is a description of the aesthetic dimensions of discrimination through the geometric deployment of lines (that maximally extend white bodies into space) and an angle of vision (that constitutes totalized and rigidified racial hierarchies).”
So far as I can tell, and having stared at it for some time, the pile of words above seems intended to repel comprehension. Perhaps we’re supposed to back away from it in bewildered deference.
“Race is lived through an aesthetic geometry of lines and angles that connect and disconnect bodies on a pre-conscious level,” Lewis asserts, adding that “whiteness is a kind of one-dimensional way of being in the world.”
Ah. Bad whitey. That much is clear. Now do brownness.
According to Dr Lewis, “The question of whiteness cannot be avoided if we are to continue to uphold the idea of educational equity and equality.” However, as the word equity, when used anywhere near a campus, roughly translates as “equality of outcome regardless of input,” and is therefore both condescending and unfair, readers may not share our educator’s enthusiasm.
When not signalling his fashionable disdain for all things white and male, and doing violence to the English language in the name of “critical pedagogy,” Dr Lewis writes inexplicably neglected erotic literature.
Of course, once the Great Meteor from Space strikes the earth and we have to rebuild civilization, we will poll people on what they have to offer the massive effort. Me? I’m a civil engineer. That guy, he’s an electrician. That woman, a nurse – a healer. There’s the symphony trumpeter, he can teach the children music. Oh, Tyson Lewis, you teach bullshit theories about whiteness and racial hierarchies? OK, you go sit over there with the gender studies major and interpretative dance instructor. If – IF – there’s any food left, we’ll throw you some crumbs. Otherwise stay out of the way of real people, doing real work.
I call it my GMS test. If what you do would offer no utility to a rebuilding world then I’m not paying any attention to you.
you go sit over there
Not if there are latrines that need tending or bodies that need burning.
If what you do would offer no utility to a rebuilding world
I’m a DevOps engineer. It chastens me to admit that after an honours computer science degree and two decades of honing my craft, post-Meteor I’m probably going to be burning bodies. In the latrine.
From one of David’s links above:
“It’s important to understand that nonsense of this kind is rarely arrived at by accident. It’s highly unlikely that mere clumsiness and mental dullness would produce such determined vacuity. It’s less probable still that so many academics and students would, by chance and dullness alone, produce vacuity with such eerie uniformity. To produce ‘work’ of the generic emptiness shown above … requires practice and dedication, and no small dishonesty. One might forgive genuine stupidity and a lack of mental wherewithal, but when people who aren’t entirely stupid are determined to peddle stupidity as the height of intellectual sophistication, well, that’s harder to excuse. In a saner world, Guertin and her peers would be laughed out of every room they entered. And a gentle pelting with soft fruit wouldn’t go amiss.”
That, sir, is spot on, and the best paragraph I’ve read in quite some time. Where’s that tip jar?
You know, aliens on the other side of the universe are probably teaching their kids the exact same math, right? Lovecraftian cosmic horrors from hypothetical causally disconnected universes that are unrelated to ours in any way probably arrive at the same mathematical principles (though they may disagree on which constructions are relevant to them).