Disciplinary Tribalism or Slice and Dice?

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by a historian suggests that on the whole thinkers like Hegel, Freud and Marx are no longer being taught, and if they are being taught it is only outside of each thinkers discipline.  So the broad claim is that Hegel, for the most part, is not taught in philosophy departments, Freud is barely spoken of in psychology departments and Marx won’t be found in any course offerings through the economics department. The author of the article, Russell Jacoby, suggests

The divorce between informed opinion and academic wisdom could not be more pointed. If educated individuals were asked to name leading historical thinkers in psychology, philosophy, and economics, surely Freud, Hegel, and Marx would figure high on the list. Yet they have vanished from their home disciplines. How can this be?  A single proposition can hardly explain the fate of several thinkers across several fields. However, general trends can inform separate disciplines. For starters, the ruthlessly anti- or nonhistorical orientation that informs contemporary academe encourages shelving past geniuses.

McSchoarma Anyone?

Ugh.

I’m insulted. It took them ten years to figure out that women would drop out of the work force for the same reason as men?!?!?

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

The whole article after the jump.

Professorial Conspiracy: Circa This Morning

So the kids are home for the summer and the campus is empty. This is about that (oh so lonely) time of the academic year when you notice strange things like new buildings popping up where before there was only a nice lawn and a bench, or new signs that promote this or that activity. Personal favorite from last year was a huge sign that stated clearly and distinctly: WELCOME STUDENTS! My attempts to draw attention to the conspicuous lack of a comma and thus a completely different meaning from the one intended (unless it was one of those Derridean things) were met with a kind of look that said “Ahh, so cute, the foreigner is giving us a lesson about our own language… ” This year a certain important school on campus is celebrating its anniversary so there a series of small flags on lamp posts with pictures and dates. The first one (from the main campus entrance) has a picture of a bunch of happy kids and a label “Circa 2008″ - awkward but ultimately understandable strategy, the picture could have been taken any time in the last couple of years but no one dared to assert themselves and just suggest “2008″ as a signature.  Who knows? Someone will email the Dean’s office and say: “I am in that picture and it was in 2006, so you’re wrong, please correct immediately!” So the compromise was reached since “circa” was good enough. 

The next photo is signed “circa 1922″ and features an old-looking building with an Al-Capone-looking car - again, makes sense since it could have been taken in, I don’t know, 1918. And you had to maintain a uniform look, right? You can’t have one photo say “circa 2008″ and another simply “1922″ - all of this makes sense until you get to this banner. It’s not the “circa 1997″ that I’m concerned about, it’s the fact that it is some serious administration people and donors participating in a ceremony of laying the grounds (or whatever it is called) for the new huge building, a major shift in the history of the school, yet the date of this momentous event is apparently unknown. Now I have nothing against “circa” when it’s like “circa Jesus time” or “circa 500 BCE” but “circa 1997″? As I always say - just write it in Latin and it will look cool and professional. Which leads me to my main story: professorial conspiracy!

Mikhail Iampolski’s Lecture

I came across this public lecture by Mikhail Iampolski (NYU) who, along with another Mikhail (Mikhail Epstein, Emory), is one of most visible Russian intellectuals working in what could be loosely labeled “culture studies” in US and Russia. Give it a listen - nice thick Russian accent and, of course, sort of thought-provoking ramblings without the annoying Zizekian all-over-the-place-ness.

A Form of Time and a Moment of Kairos

Mikhail Iampolski

Other Voices, v.2, n.3 (January 2005)

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Copyright © 2005, Other Voices/Mikhail Iampolski, all rights reserved.

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Summary:

Lenin’s Complete Works

In case you’re looking to buy Lenin’s complete works, I highly recommend this Russian store that ships overseas (depending you how much you’re willing to pay, it might take a while) and generally is a great source for Russian books - I have tried many various ways of supplying myself with Russian books and I have to tell you that the stores that sells Russian books in the US are no good: they overcharge (knowing the difference in book prices in both countries) and only sell old used books for the most part which only works if you want some Pushkin or Dostoevsky to casually put on your coffee table and impress that special someone: “Oh yeah, I was rereading it in Russian, so much better in the original, so much better…”

BBC Proms 2008: Radio Broadcasts Start Today.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to all the programs available to listen (and watch, if you’re in UK).

For those of us on this side of the world, it seems that the only way to enjoy BBC Proms this year is via BBC Radio 3 broadcasts which are about to begin its live transmission and then, as the website claims, these broadcasts will be available for 7 days for those who want to listen to them (again).

It’s 6:30pm (London time) now, so the first broadcast will be in about 1.5 hours - so it will be 3pm ET. Enjoy!

Here’s a full schedule you can look through, as always, great diversity so plenty of things to hear.

First Night of the Proms - Part 1

No Regulation Without Representation: Continuing with Malabou.

Before I continue with my reading of Malabou’s Les Nouveaux blessés, here’s a quick recap of the previous episodes. First post was concerned mainly with the introductory matters. Second, with cerebrality and sexuality. Third, with cerebral autoaffection which is where I got distracted and went reading all kinds of interesting books on related topics on which I may post later. This notion of cerebral autoaffection, it seems to me, reminds one of Derrida’s discussion of iterability.  However, Malabou’s account does not really mention or engage Derrida’s notion, and justifiably so, one might argue. To help organize my thought here, I’d like to see the whole of the first chapter:

Chapter 1: L’autoaffection cérébrale:

1. De l’énergie nerveuse à l’énergie psychique: Freud ou le cerveau détourné.
2. La redéfinition du cerveau comme psyché.
3. Le cerveau temporel et l’inconscient destructible.

“Buns and Guns:” Would you like Militarism with that?

I couldn’t resist sharing this article.  Fast food will never be the same:

‘Buns and Guns’ Fast Food Eatery Opens in Beirut

BEIRUT, Lebanon, (AP) - At the “Buns and Guns,” the chefs wear military helmets, the food is wrapped in camouflage paper and the advertising slogan is “a sandwich can kill you.”  The fast food eatery with a tongue-in-cheek military theme opened three weeks ago in Beirut’s Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs and is drawing in residents proud of the Shiite militant group’s battlefield successes.  Done up like a military outpost, the restaurant is located in the heart of a neighborhood heavily pounded by Israel during its 2006 war with Hezbollah, which fought the Israeli military to a standstill.

Neatly stacked sandbags cover the exterior, while the inside is festooned with camouflage nets, defused mortar shells and live ammunition. Employees in military uniforms serve meals to the taped sounds of gunfire as “background music.”

Lieberman and Hagee: Best Friends Forever

Joe Lieberman is at it again.  He can’t help himself!  Lieberman is scheduled to be a featured speaker and honored guest of none other than Pastor John Hagee next week. If you don’t recall, Hagee’s the same delightful guy that said in public that God sent Hitler. Even McCain had the smarts to renounce Hagee’s endorsement in June, and common sense would have figured that Lieberman would do the same. Yet, they are, to use tweener vernacular, BFF!  Lieberman has called Hagee a “eesh elokim like Moses” even though Hagee (among many other things) has spouted such tolerant and fair-minded judgments, whether calling the Catholic Church a “great whore,” blaming Hurricane Katrina on the gay community of New Orleans, or repeatedly declaring that “all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews,” Hagee knows just how to sweet talk Joe Lieberman.

Now, whenever people point this out to Joe he likes to gesture to Hagee’s pro-Israel record.  Now, last time I checked Hagee supports such counterproductive measures like the construction of more settlements and has advocated for going to war with Iran, but most troubling is this whole apocalyptic, Armageddon, Christian Zionism nonsense, by which I mean that Hagee and his traveling circus believe (see this article) that

before the Second Coming of Jesus, Jews will return to Israel for a final confrontation with Iran, which will cause all the Arab nations to unite under Russia’s leadership, and lead to an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.

Seriously Joe, what the fuck?  Good grief! I wonder if Joe Lieberman got arressted, sent to Rikers and was then raped in the shower he’d put his rapist on the payroll as his very own proctologist.  Just saying, you know?