Blogger KC Johnson highlights a book by one of the “Duke 88” professors regarding race and basketball. The book, by Grant Farred, contains writing like this:
?The contradictory, contingent nature of racial articulation can be
identified in those moments when the figure of discursive initiation
(here, Van Gundy) speaks from a disjunctive?or, non-raced?place, as in
those racist Phantoms released into public circulations in sites where
their presence and articulation are not expected.?
It’s almost as if Farred has taken writing lessons from Alan Sokal, who famously hoodwinked a Duke-published postmodern academic journal into printing, in Sokal’s words, “a pastiche of left-wing cant” that was “liberally salted with nonsense” that “sounded good and … flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.” We’re wondering if some of those same editors worked on Farred’s book.
