Triple word score! ;)

Of necessity during my doctoral studies, I’ve learned to be glib with conceptually complex, multi-syllabic terms. It is a personal quirk, however, that I only use such terms when I am quite sure of what they mean — especially since I’ve been on the receiving end of supposedly academic conversations where I was highly dubious about the correct usage of the terms being thrown around in order to appear clever.

I should probably also note that I tend to talk faster when I’m excited and enthusiastic about a subject. ;)

So earlier today, with one of my housemates, I was discussing Luce Irigaray, a French feminist philosopher who is both a fascinating and original thinker, yet also a lyrically complex enough writer that her work is a definite challenge to follow. She is one of the few authors I know of where you really do want a like-minded discussion group to make sure you haven’t missed any of the wonderful depth of her meaning. Unfortunately, however, this means many otherwise clever academics simply blow her off as too convoluted and/or too peculiarly feminist to understand.

So anyway, I mentioned searching on-line for reviews of Irigaray’s latest book (which I was reading), since I often find that exploring another’s viewpoint offers me valuable new perspectives which I had, up to that point, missed. I noted a bit sadly to my housemate that the first two reviews I’d googled were negative, but that I’d consequently found one wherein the author clearly “got” the philosophical issues which Irigaray was exploring in her latest book. As I enthusiastically noted to my housemate, “The reviewer really nicely laid out Irigaray’s exposure of cultural phallocentrism in Western religion — and I’d completely missed that!”

My housemate listened to that with a remarkably straight face, then said, “Casually using cultural phallocentrism in a sentence — okay, that’s definitely a triple word score!” He grinned and added, “You know if it weren’t you saying this, this would be seriously setting off my bullshit-O-meter. You, though — I believe you really mean it, and know what you just said.”

Pause… then I mock-innocently replied in the same high-speed tone, “What, you don’t feel I really comprehend her feminist epistemological objectivity?”

Another pause… then a mock-pout from my housemate: “Okay, now you’re just being mean to me!”

;-D