Archive for the 'Academia' Category

The Point of the Arts and Humanities

January 12, 2011 0 Comments

via Paul Bowman, who posts a list of thinking “points” on the “point” of the Arts and Humanities:

1.      Any ‘point’ of or for the Arts and Humanities is bound up with the question of ‘the point’ of the university as such.

2.      Any answer about ‘the point’ of the university itself is bound up with the answer to the question of what kind of society we are or ought to be living in or striving to construct.

Or as Northrop Frye once argued “The ethical purpose of a liberal education is to liberate, which can only mean to make one capable of conceiving society as free, classless, and urbane. No such society exists, which is one reason why a liberal education must be deeply concerned with works of the imagination.”

Tags: , . Categories: Academia and Education

For basil

December 22, 2010 1 Comment

…who is a Dr. now too! Congratulations!

Tags: , , , , . Categories: Academia, Education and PhD Thesis

Badiou and Žižek in NYC (Audio)

October 26, 2010 1 Comment

Reviewed at Kasama.

Each speaker expressed his own particular enthusiasm and sense of urgency regarding the necessity of reconstituting communism for the 21st century, though what this means exactly, still remains very abstract. For the most part Badiou and Zizek avoided any discussion of concrete or practical tasks (aka “What is to be done?”) aside from

  1. the need to restore the Communist Hypothesis to its proper place among philosophers and other thinking people, and
  2. to pay close attention to those new forms of political practice that emerge through current struggles.

As Badiou himself put it, this hypothesis is essentially a negative operation, amounting basically to the assertion and belief –recurrent throughout history, from at least Sparatacus on—that it is possible and necessary to transcend the structures and limitations of class society, and to establish an egalitarian order.

Audio of the talk is available at Impose Magazine.

Tags: , , , , . Categories: Academia

Book “Wish List”

April 12, 2010 0 Comments

On the right sidebar you’ll see a link to a Book Depository “wish list.” Book Depository because of the free shipping anywhere in the world (though it does not save my shipping details, you’ll have to email me for my address). There is also an Amazon list for those more familiar and comfortable with that venue (though there are shipping costs, it does have the advantage of saving my shipping details so you won’t have to email me.)

This is a list of books that I want/need for my research and general edification and enlightenment. I’m not trying to monetize this blog, even though I pay for the hosting of the site. For a while I toyed with doing a Google Ads thing on here, just to see how the process worked and see if there were a few cents to be made. But no, that’s a little too brazen and I hate ads anyway. Then I thought about a straight up PayPal “donation” button, to which I thought “no, that would make it appear that education should be thought of as a charity, which I definitely disagree with.” The booklist seems like a nice thing to publicise. On the one hand, you get to see what types of books I like to read, on the other, maybe you will feel a twang of generosity and decide to buy me one! Not that I expect it, this is more of an experiment than anything else. Also, you can find a bunch of free music on this site, which will increase over time. I won’t sell my old recordings again, I prefer to just give them away on this site. So, you could think of the book wish list as a “books for music swap” if you like.

Thanks!

Tags: , , . Categories: Academia, Books and PhD Thesis

Lewis R. Gordon – The Market Colonization of Intellectuals

April 7, 2010 0 Comments

A brilliant piece from TruthOut, The Market Colonization of Intellectuals, by Louis R. Gordon.

In many forums over the past decade, public intellectuals seem unable to talk about pressing social issues without performing the equivalent of an academic literature review. Although reasons range from trying to inform their audiences of relevant debates to efforts to demonstrate erudition, that many public intellectuals present their work as the basis for rewards in academe and the entertainment industry suggests influences tantamount to the colonization of intellectuals by the ever-expanding market.

There was a time when the divide between academic intellectuals and those whose primary vocation was the common weal was marked by location. The former worked in universities, colleges, professional schools and seminaries. The latter worked in public organizations, advocacy groups, civic and religious associations, political parties and given the consequences of dissent, a good number of them produced their work from prisons and the trenches in times of war.

These two spheres offered communities for intellectual development and, crucially, they offered, albeit in the past, modest employment. To think, everyone needs also to eat.

Along the way, some academics became public figures and some public figures became academics. But the political legitimation of either depended on the impact of their work on public institutions and social movements. Then came a wave of reactionary policies in the 1980s into the past decade in an effort to push back the achievements of the 1960s. Accompanying these efforts was a war against left-oriented intellectuals.

Read the rest…

Tags: , , , . Categories: Academia