Printculture : Culture, Politics, and Academic Life

Advice to Depressed People: 'L'enfer, c'est les autres'

by H Saussy | May 09, 2008

It happens a lot, particularly in the States. You are feeling awful for no apparent reason, wondering if you wouldn't be better off dead. So you hie yourself off to a psychiatrist, who prescribes pills, or to a psychologist, who gives you training in counteracting depressive thought patterns. And you feel better, or you don't.

The problem with both the pills and the thought-pattern training is that they concieve of the depression as something that is wrong with you, something in your skull. If your attitude could be adjusted, you would become “functional” again.

Media Creoles

by H Saussy | May 06, 2008

Imagine, for the moment, a utopian scenario. In languages A and B, for every word in A there can be found a corresponding term in B. Translation goes forward smoothly and everyone is happy. Indeed, philosophers such as Donald Davidson assure us that ultimately this is the way languages work: translation is always possible, though it may not be w...

Spoiler Alert: Watership Down, part 2

by E Hayot | May 05, 2008

A series in which I retell from memory the plot of some film, novel, or other narrative sequence. ---------- (Last week's part 1). As I said, the rabbits have adventures. They are fleeing, and searching for a new warren. At a certain point they find shelter in a warren populated by sleek, healthy rabbits. These rabbits behave profoundly unnatura...

Collectivities

by J Lee | May 02, 2008

At a party a few months ago my friend Tom told me about his attempt to bike to Everest Base Camp. After flying into a small Sherpa town the area was hit by an unseasonable and record-breaking blizzard. The two-man party never even got on their bikes. Instead, they joined stranded climbers and locals and spent the time shoveling snow off the roof...

Spoiler Alert: Watership Down

by E Hayot | April 30, 2008

A series in which I retell from memory the plot of some film, novel, or other narrative sequence. ---------- I read this novel seven or eight times between the ages of 11 and 14. In my memory now it is condensed to two or three scenes, only one of which I ever think of regularly, and which has become a weirdly recurring part of my intellectual l...

The Possibility of Effective Nonviolence

by E Hayot | April 28, 2008

A rare victory for the forces of good over the last two weeks: faced with the refusal of South African cargo unions to unload a shipload of weapons destined for Zimbabwe, the People's Republic of China has (apparently) decided to bring the ship back home. The heroism of the dock workers and their union, the South African Transport Workers Union,...

The University of Excellence, No, Make That Prosperity

by H Saussy | April 25, 2008

It's a special day when the Wall Street Journal has something nice to say about Yale. In this case, they say good things about Rick Levin-- who deserves them, in my opinion. But the framework in which the praise is uttered conforms to the WSJ's all-encompassing scenario: universities are competitors in a market. Yale is a brand that must struggl...

More short takes

by E Hayot | April 20, 2008

I had promised more on feminism, but looking over what I'd said last week, I'm not sure I have much more to say. The desuetude of my Printculture career continues apace. In the meantime some links and other things that will allow you to amuse yourself on the internet without my help.

About Takes

by J Lee | April 19, 2008

I keep thinking if I work for a few more hours I'll finish my post. But it is not to be. The wheels are turning too slowly. So for this week, I have give you some links but no conclusions; I’ll leave it to someone with a better-functioning mind to try to make sense of it all. Start by reading K Klingensmith’s post “States of Emergency,” on St...

Interdisciplinarity

by H Saussy | April 17, 2008

This link is a little old, but ever-so-up-to-date. A year and a half ago, some of the top profs at NYU were asked what the big new trend in humanities were. A few said “neuroscience,” some said “globalism,” but by far the winner-- which wins partly because it encapsulates the former two and much else besides-- was “...

The Namable

by C Bush | April 16, 2008

Every issue of The New Yorker is full of signs of the apocalypse, if you chose to look for them, but this week I was particularly struck by three items that may, alas, say a good deal to future time capsule excavators: 1) A Mastercard contest in which you can win a commissioned portrait by Julian Schnabel. The game piece/involvement device is si...

What happened to feminism?

by E Hayot | April 15, 2008

I was talking the other day with a scholar whose work changed the face of American feminism in the 1980s, and who was part, more generally, of the wave of feminist theory and criticism that swept through the academy, the courts, and society in general in that era. “What ever happened to feminism?” I asked her. I meant the question, t...

Trips to the grave

by J Lee | April 12, 2008

We start out early in the morning, just as K has for the thirty years since his mother died. In the beginning he and his father and brother needed to leave early because the day-long trip required multiple bus rides and a good deal of hiking; we leave our warm apartment just after breakfast to avoid traffic and to preserve the rest of the day fo...

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This time it's personal . . . .

For those of you who have missed history since it ended back in 1992 , you'll be happy to know that it's back. Robert Kagan, one of the intellectual lights who helped lead the U.S. into Iraq, has a new book forthcoming: The Return of History and the End of Dreams. I'm glad that History is back, but I will miss the dreams.

Make yourself crazy

Printculture readers who enjoy making themselves unhappy will enjoy, I believe, the comments responding to Stanley Fish's latest column, a review of a book on the effect of French theory (which I have called “Freedom” theory since 2003) on the American academy. Fish's own piece strikes me as, in general, not bad.

Cat Found

Via Newscoma, this fabulous image, apparently taken in Los Angeles. (Click image to enlarge, then look at the cat.)

Bad Moon Rising

Check out this short documentary on the political and economic influence of Rev. Moon (of Moonies fame).

Doubles, Triples, Quadruples, and More!!

Has anyone else noticed a recent increase in spam that claims to magnify not only the intensity of male orgasms, but the quantity of ejaculate?

I don't see the margin in it...

One of the reasons worth keeping with Andrew Sullivan's blog is that he has great links to interesting stuff (for instance the science fair photos I wrote about Monday). Today it's this mind-blowing video of a phone that reads brain signals and translates them into speech. Holy shit.

The idea file

Very interesting piece by James Harkin in The Financial Times about how the field of idea production has shifted from Europe to the United States.

Here's a paragraph:

However, America's dominance in the new global landscape of ideas is not only a matter of resources. Americans have also become expert packagers of ideas. American writers and thinkers seem to have acquired the knack of explaining complex ideas in accessible ways for popular audiences. The success of idea books such as The Tipping Point and Freakonomics and a rather depressing glut of books about happiness has signified to cultural commissars a thirst for good ideas clearly expressed. It helps that journalism in America is taken more seriously than it is in most other countries; its newspapers and magazines have been happy to whet the public appetite for interesting ideas, clearly articulated. The New Yorker, buoyed by staff writers such as Malcolm Gladwell, James Surowiecki and Louis Menand, has developed a reputation for helping to explain complex ideas to a lay audience. In 2000, The New York Times even inaugurated an annual “ideas of the year” supplement, handing out gongs to the best new ideas around the world.

Read the rest here; and please, my fellow Printculture authors, feel free to blog about this...

Frozen in Grand Central

This lovely video, involving the production of a living work of art in NY's Grand Central Station, is a reminder of the possibilities and pleasures of the aesthetic, and perhaps, for those who have been reading Hardt and Negri, an example of the kind of immaterial production of the common whose labor-form has become, they argue, hegemonic today.

Robot, to human: why are my eyes leaking?

A friend writes in:

I'm going to pass this next item on to you because it is so AWESOME that it needs wider recognition: yesterday, while checking the arthritis index at Accuweather (because it is hilarious and awesome) I found a picture of the New York skyline showing the twin shafts of light used to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 (all this in mid-February), and below it this alienated jewel of a user's comment: “Brings a tear in one eye for sadness the other eye another tear for the rebirth.”

I'm reminded of this, but also of this. But also: just think of how we'll be crying when they rebuild the Namdaemoon gate!

More Offset entries...