Friday, May 8, 2015

Dissertation Misery.149-Page PhD Thesis With No Punctuation Is an Anticolonialist Protest.

Patrick Stewart, 61, has successfully defended his PhD thesis in architecture at the University of British Columbia, despite the fact that it was mostly written without any punctuation marks or capital letters or identifiable grammar.

http://gawker.com/149-page-phd-thesis-with-no-punctuation-is-an-anticolon-1703098465

19 comments:

  1. What a pretentious little shit.

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    1. I disagree.

      His point is that we are the pretentious little shits -- or big shits, perhaps would be more correct -- who have been getting away with formalist crap at the expense of other cultures for way too long.

      Given that he had to do the equivalent of two Ph.D.s in order to get through the process, this clearly goes well beyond 'performance art' or stunt.

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    2. Punctuation serves a useful purpose. The fact that a system is unfairly imposed on a person or culture does not make the aystem any less useful.

      Text written with punctuation is better than without. If you forgo that, you are conducting a stunt to attract attention, or you think you are making a Statement. Anybody who thinks their dissertation is that important is a fool.

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    3. UBC student writes 52,438 word architecture dissertation with no punctuation — not everyone loved it.

      TL;DR -- He apparently submitted his thesis in a language other than what (at least one of) his committee would accept, so he had to rewrite it.

      My thoughts: On the one hand, his rewriting it in English was under protest. On the other, did not his whole graduate program up to that point prepare him for the idea that he had to meet certain requirements for the thesis to be accepted? So while I like the idea of "sticking it to the man", I'm not sure he picked the right forum to do it. And now I'm tone policing.

      But thinking of my own dissertation, it was useful in that it got done, and in that it was completely rewritten into an actual paper or two that made for better reading. Other than that, it was a decent new formalism, methods, and analysis surrounded by shit for intro and shit for discussion -- an inverse shit sandwich. I do know that it was "read" because about five years ago, I uploaded it to Turnitin just for shits and giggles, and a few of its most ponderous and pretentious original phrases turned up in a dissertation dated two decades after I wrote mine. It was both oddly flattering and quite a WTF. I guess the candidate figured that ripping off the papers would be too obvious.

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  2. The tools are the ones who accepted it.

    Fab

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    1. It's architecture. Have you seen what those people consider acceptable work? Buildings you can't live in, work in, or exhibit art in without dramamine. Buildings that make your eyes hurt and couldn't be blended into a neighborhood without wide-area bombing. Dramatic space and spatial dramatics.

      This seems like pretty straightforward work to me.

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    2. I am wondering what a building design informed by someone's experience of being "born homeless" would look like. Sorry. It was low-hanging fruit, but it needed to be picked.

      I have lived and worked in buildings that should have never been rendered any larger than the popsicle-stick models that were submitted to their gasping, obsequious graders. These people should be sentenced to live and work in their own buildings, but they are probably just masochistic enough not to see the problem.

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  3. Lots of luck to this guy to GET A JOB with that. Techno-people have strong needs to communicate with each other.

    It's funny, but this reminds me of the Biblical story of the tower of Babel. The project got so big and complex, it was halted when the team members found they could no longer communicate with each other. This is bad enough already: we don't need provocateurs who think they're taking a swipe at the hegemony to help.

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  4. Am I the only one who feels they should specify which Patrick Stewart?

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    1. The one who played Captain Picard is now 74.

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    2. I was momentarily confused about that also.

      Can you imagine Sharner writing. With. Out Punc. Tu. Ation?

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    3. Nope. I thought that too.

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    4. BEN. Did you MEAN, Bill SHATNer. He too IS, from CANAda, and would BE, connECTed, to Patrick STEWart, PhD, through both THAT, and, the Star Trek/PicARD, associAtion.

      I also liked the suggestion of one Gawker commenter, to read the sample from the dissertation in the voice of Christopher Walken.

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    5. William Shatner is well known for punctuating what he says with grinning musicians behind him, one on bass, one on flute, one on bongos. The best-ever was when Sarah Palin unexpectedly walked in and read some of HIS writing, and they walked out arm-in-arm:

      "...do-do, doodley-do..." ""...do-do-DO-DO-do-do..." "BOP-sha-BOP!"

      Here it is:

      http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbgqse_sarah-palin-vs-william-shatner_news

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. this

      comment

      has been

      if it ever

      was but now is

      most certainly not

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  6. bell hooks.

    Ntozake Shange.

    Those would have been better references for him to use. He is not doing anything that shocking or new.

    He appears to be an architect who is sensitive to the purposes of shelter, which go beyond shelter from the elements.

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    1. I agree with all points. This was for me an opportunity to (re)acquaint myself with the works in question. I started with Shange's "Sorry". It reaches in, grabs the part of you that knows exactly what she's talking about, and makes you see new things you couldn't see till you have somebody else's eyes.

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