Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Not Making This Up: Death Of Academia: "Critical Hospitality Studies" [update]

Three signs of the death of academia:
1. Critical x studies for virtually every value of 'x'.
2. Left-wing capture
3. The very existence of disciplines like this.
I mean...can this possibly be for real? Critical hospitality studies????
   These lame-ass pseudo-disciplines always come up with such blurbs:
Critical Hospitality Studies continues to gain momentum both in academia and aligned to current world affairs and events.
The cringe-inducing grammatical error used to fudge things is perfect, actually. Does anybody really believe, first of all, that this bullshit is not only "gaining momentum" but continuing to gain momentum? And what the hell can it possibly mean to say that it continues to gain momentum both in academia "and aligned to current world affairs and events"? The intention is clearly to give the impression that "critical hospitality studies" is, like, super duper important... But...why? Because it's "aligned" with "current world affairs and events"? What the hell does that mean? That they're talking about them, I guess? Who the hell knows?
   Listen: if you can't even produce a grammatical first sentence for your conference announcement....well...you suck.
   Also embarrassing: the conference program (Conference title: "Hospitality IS Society").
   We have this embarrassing major called "Hotel and restaurant management." I imagine this "critical hospitality studies" cringe comes from merging this sort of bone-headed, academia-destroying vocational training bullshit with critical theory--which is bone-headed, academia-destroying pseudo-philosophical bullshit on the more theoretical end of things. Frankly, I expected a lot more stuff about welcoming "migrants."
   This is a reductio of contemporary academia.

[addendum:
Don't miss the second sentence!:
Critical hospitality scholars have and can add much to the debates around what constitutes hospitality and how this could function within societies, communities, workplaces and among individuals.
]

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like this game. Critical Sports Science. Critical Pharmacology. Critical Critical Studies.

If Rome really is burning, might as well play our violins.

(Also, if you really want to feel like crap, the first two pretty much exist. How else could we tolerate transpeople participating in their opposite-sex sports? And there has to be some Big Pharma/anti-racism abomination lurking in the swampier corners of the Left hive mind.)

9:55 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

lol shouldn't that be 'critical critical studies studies'?

I think you're onto something there, Anon... And/or: Critical Watch A Cornerstone Of Western Civilization Collapse Studies. And/or Critical Some Men* Just Want To Watch The World Burn Studies...

Maybe we need to develop a kind of right-ish analog of critical theory..."analytical theory" or some analogous bullshit that injects anti-left presuppositions into everything, and can attach itself to any discipline and pretend to be academic.

10:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"lol shouldn't that be 'critical critical studies studies'?"

Critical Critical Sports Science Studies Studies. When will this end???!1?

"Maybe we need to develop a kind of right-ish analog of critical theory..."analytical theory" or some analogous bullshit that injects anti-left presuppositions into everything, and can attach itself to any discipline and pretend to be academic."

The Right's too down-market to make it really work. Honestly I think the Right's equivalent is something like Zerohedge, which is pretty darn bonkers, but at least has some contrarian use.

But if the right were to metastasize in the university anywhere near the level of the looney left, I suspect we'd see things like "Evolutionary Perspectives on 19th Century Russian Literature".

10:33 AM  
Blogger Aa said...

What's embarrassing about it? We have one also, and I know several very successful business owners who credit the program with helping them succeed (that an working their asses off).

12:02 PM  
Blogger Pete Mack said...

Aa--
I suspect you mean a regular hospitality degree, which is a type of business degree. (It also will include some practical courses in professional cooking.)

3:42 PM  
Blogger Aa said...

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. I'm very impressed by our program, to be honest. They do a very good job of helping people start their own businesses, or succeed in the hospitality industry.

6:57 PM  

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