Printculture : Culture, Politics, and Academic Life

by J Lee | May 13, 2008

Part 1

I’m in the middle of a dozen small tasks when the phone rings: explaining to W why he needs to leave spaces between words, timing M’s next trip to the potty, sorting the laundry, performing triage on my inbox. I check the caller ID: it is T. So he’s not dead. That’s good.

What about politics?

by E Hayot | May 12, 2008

Last week, Printculture commenter Babykong, searching for reasons to turn away from the blinding light of my summary of Watership Down, whose photon-drenched penumbra had laid bare the furthest reaches of his conscience, requested that the blog give him material that would be a little easier on his soul: something, for gods' sake, on the current...

Conferencing

by H Saussy | May 10, 2008

Today we offer, in memory of the parties that erupted all over Paris upon Mitterrand's election in May 1981, an icon of sociality in the form of a Printculture Mount Rushmore. After the jump.

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 ...

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 “...

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The Future of the Book

Ezra Klein on the Kindle:

The true promise of the Kindle, and its inevitable descendants, is in creating a product that goes where the book cannot. Printed text is fundamentally limited. Once on the page, nothing more can be done with it. With digital text, everything is a draft, to be edited, altered, broadened, remixed, and redirected. As better conveyors of electronic text are developed, the big question is how content itself will change to take advantage of the new opportunities.

And the answer to that big question is here.

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.

More Offset entries...