BEST THING SAID TO ME TODAY: In an email I just received:
"It almost makes me regret sprinkling your desk with ricin..."
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
29.2.08
28.2.08
26.2.08
QUITE SO: One day, I would like to be famous enough to begin an article in this manner:
"I want to begin in the middle of things so that I can move back and forth and not pretend that my argument is a march toward a necessary conclusion. It isn't that; maybe some later version of the argument will start at the beginning, if I can figure out where the beginning is."
-Michael Walzer, "Beyond Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights in Global Society"
"I want to begin in the middle of things so that I can move back and forth and not pretend that my argument is a march toward a necessary conclusion. It isn't that; maybe some later version of the argument will start at the beginning, if I can figure out where the beginning is."
-Michael Walzer, "Beyond Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights in Global Society"
23.2.08
Culled from recent readings:
i. Sam Wells, Power and Passion
"But there is a third sacrifice that derives directly from the contrast of Barabbas and Jesus. And that is the sacrifice of the cross. Jesus went to the cross as one who knew that his embodiment of God's never-ending love meant he was going to have to face death. But the shape of the Old and New Testaments presents Jesus' sacrifice as making sense only as the last sacrifice, the one that finally took away sin and inaugurated the peaceful flourishing of all creation in God's company. The sacrifice of the Son of God is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. So the war to end all wars was not the First World War; it was the cross. The good news of the cross is fundamentally that the war is over. When we gather at the altar, when we recall the cross by breaking the bread of Christ's body, when we share the banquet of Christ's resurrection in bread and wine, we celebrate the good news that the war, the real war--against sin, death, and the devil--is over."
ii. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (p. 654)
"On the basis of this initiative, the incomprehensible healing power of this suffering, it becomes possible for human suffering, even of the most meaningless type, to become associated with Christ's act, and to become a locus of renewed contact with God, an act which heals the world. The suffering is given transformative effect, by being offered to God.
A catastrophe thus can become part of a providential story, by being responded to in a certain way; its meaning lies not in its antecedents, but in what is drawn out of it; just as the ultimate meaning of the Fall was the Incarnation that was God's response to it (hence its paradoxical description as a 'felix culpa'). Neither the Lisbon earthquake nor the Boxing Day tsunami, neither the second World War nor Hiroshima, can be understood with reference to their antecedents as punishment; but they are given meaning through God's steadfast resolve not to abandon humanity in its worst distress."
iii. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice
"Augustine's ever deeper immersion in Scripture, from the time of his conversion onward, has brought him to the conclusion that our tendency to worry over the physical and mental well-being of family and friends, to weep at funerals for the loss of companionship, and the like is not to be ascribed to our fallenness but to our created human nature. God made us thus. To try to undo this dimension of ourselves is, "with ruthless disregard," to try to undo the work of the Creator."
i. Sam Wells, Power and Passion
"But there is a third sacrifice that derives directly from the contrast of Barabbas and Jesus. And that is the sacrifice of the cross. Jesus went to the cross as one who knew that his embodiment of God's never-ending love meant he was going to have to face death. But the shape of the Old and New Testaments presents Jesus' sacrifice as making sense only as the last sacrifice, the one that finally took away sin and inaugurated the peaceful flourishing of all creation in God's company. The sacrifice of the Son of God is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. So the war to end all wars was not the First World War; it was the cross. The good news of the cross is fundamentally that the war is over. When we gather at the altar, when we recall the cross by breaking the bread of Christ's body, when we share the banquet of Christ's resurrection in bread and wine, we celebrate the good news that the war, the real war--against sin, death, and the devil--is over."
ii. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (p. 654)
"On the basis of this initiative, the incomprehensible healing power of this suffering, it becomes possible for human suffering, even of the most meaningless type, to become associated with Christ's act, and to become a locus of renewed contact with God, an act which heals the world. The suffering is given transformative effect, by being offered to God.
A catastrophe thus can become part of a providential story, by being responded to in a certain way; its meaning lies not in its antecedents, but in what is drawn out of it; just as the ultimate meaning of the Fall was the Incarnation that was God's response to it (hence its paradoxical description as a 'felix culpa'). Neither the Lisbon earthquake nor the Boxing Day tsunami, neither the second World War nor Hiroshima, can be understood with reference to their antecedents as punishment; but they are given meaning through God's steadfast resolve not to abandon humanity in its worst distress."
iii. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice
"Augustine's ever deeper immersion in Scripture, from the time of his conversion onward, has brought him to the conclusion that our tendency to worry over the physical and mental well-being of family and friends, to weep at funerals for the loss of companionship, and the like is not to be ascribed to our fallenness but to our created human nature. God made us thus. To try to undo this dimension of ourselves is, "with ruthless disregard," to try to undo the work of the Creator."
21.2.08
THE 'COMMON SENSE' OF MICHAEL WALZER:
At Duke, a couple professors in English have a working on political theory, attended variously by professors and grad students across the usual-suspects departments. Each month, we pick a text and have a discussion on it. Two weeks ago, the reading was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and I was the person tasked with leading our discussion.
Having avoided Paine up to this point in my career (I may have read some of the "Rights of Man" as an undergrad), I decided to start with a simple question: where is the common sense in 'Common Sense?' The term only appears three times in the text (go ahead, control-F), and Paine never does anything to address the opacity of his deployment of the phrase. This use is probably the clearest:
Whether 'common sense' is a synonym of the first two, or intended to expand on it, is hard to say. Nevertheless, we settled on two possible meanings, where common sense is both the grounding of the argument and its rhetorical hope. In establishing his arguments, Paine often avers something without supporting reasons given, aside from an 'it should be obvious that...' (think 'it should be obvious that no reconciliation with England is possible'). He also writes in such a manner--in the blockquote above, for example--as to imply that his conclusions, once the individual divests himself of his particular biases, will in fact be, or become, common sensical to him.
It's this first use of the term that interests me in the context of Waldron's review of Walzer. I'd like to approach this topic by borrowing from a Jacob Levy appreciation of Walzer, namely, the prolific stream of high-quality work the latter produced over a long period of time:
I've not read the two between 'Liberalism and the Art of Separation' and Interpretation and Social Criticism, but I have read Exodus and Revolution (a very excellent book, especially if you ever do any Biblical interpretation), so let's call it a wash.
It's always struck me that Just and Unjust Wars is the odd book out here, joined perhaps by his 1995 article in Social Research, "The Politics of Rescue." Otherwise in his work, Walzer offers a strong defense of self-determination, very much along the lines Waldron indicates. That we disapprove of some practice or manner of organizing social life means nothing; we are not part of that society, and we do not get to judge. Though he carries this view to absurd extremes on occasion (as skewered by the Philosophy and Public Affairs respondents to "The Moral Standing of States"), he is consistent.
But this view, so far as I can tell, does not apply in Just and Unjust Wars: we can have a legitimate expectation that anyone fighting a war knows the rules and moral arguments governing that action, and retain the right to censure anyone who fails to live up to them. Mao is wrong to label respect for enemy combatants 'asinine ethics;' we can reasonably expect all leaders to know genocide is never acceptable.
The two positions should appear to conflict: on the one hand, peoples have a right to organize their political lives in most any way they see fit, not merely because it respects their self-determination, but because we cannot be expected to know or make good judgments about the character of the people making decisions. However, we can (and should) sanction them when their conduct exceeds certain limits, or when those actions spill out over a national boundary. Leaving aside the tricky question of what constitutes a national boundary (since there are a large number of disputes over that), one is left to wonder where the set of ethics everyone is supposed to know arises? Two strong possibilities: either there are ethics everyone is expected to have because natural law/the experience of war ensures everyone will have reactions against certain behaviors, or else the leaders of the world constitute a group that can have shared understandings in the way a people can have those same understandings.
The answer, inasmuch as there is one, appears to be that both are the case. Just and Unjust Wars page 16:
This appears to be the second, social-construction option. David Miller suggests the alternative in the introduction to Thinking Politically:
One might recognize this as a classic natural law (or ius gentium) theory, complete with explanation for self-deception. Neither of these is an explanation, exactly, of how the moral sense with respect to war comes to be. Much like 'common sense' for Paine, this moral sense, applied but never explained, does much of the work in getting his arguments off the ground. I mean to be critical of this because I don't believe that account will do--as Walzer himself notes, the human impulse to inhumanity is strong, and to combat it requires something stronger than an appeal to what we (who are never put in the position to decide these things) understand to be the case morally. I also believe that it weakens the theory of intervention he can give, for reasons I may elaborate later.
But let us review: there exists a moral standard to which we can reasonably hold all people, the violation of which justifies forcible intervention against the state, no matter what value the intervened-against claim in their defense.
On this basis, Jeremy Waldron has to be wrong to claim, as he does in the NYRB essay:
The claim has to be wrong because self-determination is always relative to the basic values which permit humanitarian intervention. To be otherwise, there would need to be a case in which a value of 'universalism' in Walzer's sense is ignored in favor of self-determination, which one could identify as morally right. I submit there are no such cases. Walzer, defense of sovereignty and all, is an interventionist; all he does is argue whether a given case justifies intervention.
At Duke, a couple professors in English have a working on political theory, attended variously by professors and grad students across the usual-suspects departments. Each month, we pick a text and have a discussion on it. Two weeks ago, the reading was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and I was the person tasked with leading our discussion.
Having avoided Paine up to this point in my career (I may have read some of the "Rights of Man" as an undergrad), I decided to start with a simple question: where is the common sense in 'Common Sense?' The term only appears three times in the text (go ahead, control-F), and Paine never does anything to address the opacity of his deployment of the phrase. This use is probably the clearest:
IN the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense: and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Whether 'common sense' is a synonym of the first two, or intended to expand on it, is hard to say. Nevertheless, we settled on two possible meanings, where common sense is both the grounding of the argument and its rhetorical hope. In establishing his arguments, Paine often avers something without supporting reasons given, aside from an 'it should be obvious that...' (think 'it should be obvious that no reconciliation with England is possible'). He also writes in such a manner--in the blockquote above, for example--as to imply that his conclusions, once the individual divests himself of his particular biases, will in fact be, or become, common sensical to him.
It's this first use of the term that interests me in the context of Waldron's review of Walzer. I'd like to approach this topic by borrowing from a Jacob Levy appreciation of Walzer, namely, the prolific stream of high-quality work the latter produced over a long period of time:
While he wrote excellent material both before and after this time, it seems to me that there's a 13-year stretch-- 1977-1990-- that's just stunning for breadth and scale of achievement. His published work from that era that I think are all major and enduring contributions, including four really quite distinct enduring books:
Just and Unjust Wars
"The Moral Standing of States"
"Philosophy and Democracy"
Spheres of Justice
"Liberalism and the Art of Separation"
"What Does It Mean to be an 'American'?"
"The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism"
Interpretation and Social Criticism
The Company of Critics
I've not read the two between 'Liberalism and the Art of Separation' and Interpretation and Social Criticism, but I have read Exodus and Revolution (a very excellent book, especially if you ever do any Biblical interpretation), so let's call it a wash.
It's always struck me that Just and Unjust Wars is the odd book out here, joined perhaps by his 1995 article in Social Research, "The Politics of Rescue." Otherwise in his work, Walzer offers a strong defense of self-determination, very much along the lines Waldron indicates. That we disapprove of some practice or manner of organizing social life means nothing; we are not part of that society, and we do not get to judge. Though he carries this view to absurd extremes on occasion (as skewered by the Philosophy and Public Affairs respondents to "The Moral Standing of States"), he is consistent.
But this view, so far as I can tell, does not apply in Just and Unjust Wars: we can have a legitimate expectation that anyone fighting a war knows the rules and moral arguments governing that action, and retain the right to censure anyone who fails to live up to them. Mao is wrong to label respect for enemy combatants 'asinine ethics;' we can reasonably expect all leaders to know genocide is never acceptable.
The two positions should appear to conflict: on the one hand, peoples have a right to organize their political lives in most any way they see fit, not merely because it respects their self-determination, but because we cannot be expected to know or make good judgments about the character of the people making decisions. However, we can (and should) sanction them when their conduct exceeds certain limits, or when those actions spill out over a national boundary. Leaving aside the tricky question of what constitutes a national boundary (since there are a large number of disputes over that), one is left to wonder where the set of ethics everyone is supposed to know arises? Two strong possibilities: either there are ethics everyone is expected to have because natural law/the experience of war ensures everyone will have reactions against certain behaviors, or else the leaders of the world constitute a group that can have shared understandings in the way a people can have those same understandings.
The answer, inasmuch as there is one, appears to be that both are the case. Just and Unjust Wars page 16:
No doubt the moral reality of war is not the same for us as it was for Genghis Kahn; nor is the strategic reality. But even fundamental social and political transformations within a particular culture may well leave the moral world intact or at least sufficiently whole so that we can still be said to share it with our ancestors. It is rare indeed that we do not share it with our contemporaries, and by and large we learn how to act among our contemporaries by studying the actions of those who have proceeded us.
This appears to be the second, social-construction option. David Miller suggests the alternative in the introduction to Thinking Politically:
The underpinning for this position can be found in his book Thick and Thin, in which he argues in defence of 'moral minimalism,' the idea that there are certain moral rules common to all societies--rules such as those prohibiting murder, deception, and gross cruelty--that exist alongside thicker morality that each society has evolved to govern its distributive practices and other areas of social life... So when humanitarian intervention takes place, it does so in the name of a principle (if Walzer is correct) the intervened-against society must already recognize. Of course, its leaders will claim that their actions are justified by the need to preserve public order or territorial integrity, goals which they claim are sufficiently important to override human rights. But they cannot dismiss the moral basis on which the intervention is being launched.
One might recognize this as a classic natural law (or ius gentium) theory, complete with explanation for self-deception. Neither of these is an explanation, exactly, of how the moral sense with respect to war comes to be. Much like 'common sense' for Paine, this moral sense, applied but never explained, does much of the work in getting his arguments off the ground. I mean to be critical of this because I don't believe that account will do--as Walzer himself notes, the human impulse to inhumanity is strong, and to combat it requires something stronger than an appeal to what we (who are never put in the position to decide these things) understand to be the case morally. I also believe that it weakens the theory of intervention he can give, for reasons I may elaborate later.
But let us review: there exists a moral standard to which we can reasonably hold all people, the violation of which justifies forcible intervention against the state, no matter what value the intervened-against claim in their defense.
On this basis, Jeremy Waldron has to be wrong to claim, as he does in the NYRB essay:
What Walzer calls 'communal integrity' has a nonrelative claim upon us; it is not a case of departing from universalism; it is a case of one universal value--self-determination--checking our enthusiasm for the imposition of others.
The claim has to be wrong because self-determination is always relative to the basic values which permit humanitarian intervention. To be otherwise, there would need to be a case in which a value of 'universalism' in Walzer's sense is ignored in favor of self-determination, which one could identify as morally right. I submit there are no such cases. Walzer, defense of sovereignty and all, is an interventionist; all he does is argue whether a given case justifies intervention.
20.2.08
LINK: Though I disagree with Rod Dreher on the context of both The Sorrow and the Pity and The Rules of the Game (the latter being my second-favorite movie), I like the general question he poses:
A few preliminary answers:
Aguierre, Wrath of God: many of the scenes were unrehearsed and unscripted? I thought the poorly-blocked, incoherent and ponderous plot was intentional (end sarcasm).
The Seven Samurai (actually, throw in Rashomon, too): The last hour of The Seven Samurai is amazing, and in no way worth the two-and-a-half hours it takes to get there. Rashomon is a good concept made dull in execution.
La Strada: I love 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita because their incoherence is intentional. Fellini tries, and succeeds, at examining the creative process and the thrill-seeking nature of youth, respectively. La Strada burdened by a plot, is just boring.
Of the films generally recognized as great, and part of the canon, which ones do you simply not get? That is, which ones leave you cold and/or confused, even though they are generally regarded as classic? Why?
A few preliminary answers:
Aguierre, Wrath of God: many of the scenes were unrehearsed and unscripted? I thought the poorly-blocked, incoherent and ponderous plot was intentional (end sarcasm).
The Seven Samurai (actually, throw in Rashomon, too): The last hour of The Seven Samurai is amazing, and in no way worth the two-and-a-half hours it takes to get there. Rashomon is a good concept made dull in execution.
La Strada: I love 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita because their incoherence is intentional. Fellini tries, and succeeds, at examining the creative process and the thrill-seeking nature of youth, respectively. La Strada burdened by a plot, is just boring.
I KNOW, I KNOW: Shylock is the bad guy in The Merchant of Venice. The demand for a pound of flesh was beyond what justice can allow, and we should all be happy the strong and plucky heroine is able to set things right. Despite all this, Shylock has the better of the argument; indeed, he is the only one who argues (until Portia comes along). Everyone else merely offers him progressively larger sums of money to buy out the contract, on the assumption that, as a money-grubbing Jew, they only need offer a high enough price. Shylock gets to the hypocrisy involved (IV, i, starting at 89):
Now, no one would be arguing either contract to be enforceable (for slavery or the pound of flesh)(well, maybe the Robert Nozick of Anarchy, State and Utopia, but the equivalence is well-drawn.
What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which like your asses and your dogs and mules
You use in abject and slavish parts,
Because you bought them. Shall I say to you,
'Let them be free! marry them to your heirs!
Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be seasoned with such viands'? You will answer,
'The slaves are ours.' So do I answer you.
The pound of flesh which I demand of him
Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgment. Answer; shall I have it?
Now, no one would be arguing either contract to be enforceable (for slavery or the pound of flesh)(well, maybe the Robert Nozick of Anarchy, State and Utopia, but the equivalence is well-drawn.
19.2.08
Yglesias makes fun of a not-especially-great article in the NYT on The Great Gatsby. The article is wrong insomuch as the people quoted unreflectively seek after their 'green light;' but the commenters who stake Gatsby as a critique of the American Dream are wrong, too.
I take the point of Gatsby to be that money doesn't change very much about a person. Tom Buchanan would be nasty and horrible even if he were poor--all his money does is permit him to be awful in more particular ways; the same is true for Jordan and her inflated self-conception. Gatsby is great and tragic: he pulls himself up to become what he is, but has a vacuity he is never able to do away with (the books on his shelf he's never read, Nick's reaction on reading Gatsby's program for self-improvement). Even so, he's 'worth the whole damn lot of them put together.' He doesn't fail because he's rich, he fails because he's a Middle Westerner trying to measure his success by the standards of the east. That's not a judgment of the American Dream, that's a judgment about the fitness of people for certain times and milieux.
I take the point of Gatsby to be that money doesn't change very much about a person. Tom Buchanan would be nasty and horrible even if he were poor--all his money does is permit him to be awful in more particular ways; the same is true for Jordan and her inflated self-conception. Gatsby is great and tragic: he pulls himself up to become what he is, but has a vacuity he is never able to do away with (the books on his shelf he's never read, Nick's reaction on reading Gatsby's program for self-improvement). Even so, he's 'worth the whole damn lot of them put together.' He doesn't fail because he's rich, he fails because he's a Middle Westerner trying to measure his success by the standards of the east. That's not a judgment of the American Dream, that's a judgment about the fitness of people for certain times and milieux.
18.2.08
IT BEGINS: I like Duke undergraduates, or at least the ones who come to office hours: unfailingly nice and respectful, ask good questions that show they've been thinking about class material, and actually listen to what I say when I five answers. I also have no problems being a TA for con law: great class, and as far as TA assignments go, manageable--holding office hours is a reasonable expectation.
That said, talking for (more or less) two and a half hours, answering questions? Kind of a lot.
Maybe I just needed more tea.
That said, talking for (more or less) two and a half hours, answering questions? Kind of a lot.
Maybe I just needed more tea.
15.2.08
LINK: Michael Blowhard again addresses the Writing v. Writin' debate:
(Approximately: writing is the activity as you may well think of it: plots, characters, narrative; writin' is contemporary literary fiction, with its emphasis on style)
The real question is more important to whom. The prospect of dissertation writing has led to an obsession with questions of style. To the extent anyone has a good, clean prose style (that I can appropriate), they're useful and interesting to me. It'd be more surprising if it were otherwise. An argument, a conversation, a paper--all have a natural flow to them that can be picked up, if not easily, than within the life and experience of the average person. Once you cross 100 pages, you begin to do something unnatural. To manage it at all takes skill--to do it well deserves notice. I don't believe there's any correspondence between Writin' and good prose style, but I'll also never be convinced that the focus on style is a bad thing.
(Approximately: writing is the activity as you may well think of it: plots, characters, narrative; writin' is contemporary literary fiction, with its emphasis on style)
All of this is fine by me. I think it's great that options exist and that people have them to choose from; I'm always eager to hear about what people enjoy and to learn about what they know. No, it's something else that bugs me, namely: Why should the package of values that the lit-fict crowd prefers be considered to be superior to the popular-fiction package?
What case can possibly be made that fussin'-with-the-writin' is automatically more important than attending to matters of character, suspense, story, situation, and entertainment? It's a pointless argument to make, no? As pointless as arguing that vegetables are automatically better than fruit, or that candy is automatically better than beef. So far as pleasure -- and even imaginative nourishment -- goes: Doesn't what matters to you at the moment always depend to a large extent on what you're looking for, what you're in the mood for, and what your preferences are?
In fact, if one of these two packages -- either the lit-fict package or the popular-fict package -- is going to be said to be more important than the other, it seems to me likely that the character-suspense-story package is of far more innate importance. The popular-fiction package reflects, after all, a direct engagement with the basics of why most people are interested in fiction in the first place. Popular fiction is the meat-and-potatoes of fiction. Lit-fict is the garnish. You tell me which is more important.
The real question is more important to whom. The prospect of dissertation writing has led to an obsession with questions of style. To the extent anyone has a good, clean prose style (that I can appropriate), they're useful and interesting to me. It'd be more surprising if it were otherwise. An argument, a conversation, a paper--all have a natural flow to them that can be picked up, if not easily, than within the life and experience of the average person. Once you cross 100 pages, you begin to do something unnatural. To manage it at all takes skill--to do it well deserves notice. I don't believe there's any correspondence between Writin' and good prose style, but I'll also never be convinced that the focus on style is a bad thing.
RECALLED TO LIFE: Between Sunday morning and 8:00-ish yesterday evening, I had zero cups of coffee, a sure sign I was sick.
(By way of comparison, on caffeine consumption: traditionally a pound of coffee will last me four to six months, as I like to vary it with tea and the occasional coke; tend to consume it more frequently when out, and so less at home; and don't care for it in the summer, for reasons I hope are blindingly obvious. The pound I just finished was on track to be consumed in three weeks, until I got sick.)
But, thanks to a Valentine's Day gift of coffee (the one from Kenya)--coffee so good I drink it on its own, in the small cups--I am back to work. Today: conference proposal (dare I submit another paper with 'Hugo Grotius' in the title? I've been thinking about the story told about law in the Cathedral chapter of The Trial), followed by Shakespeare and dissertation writing. I love my job.
(By way of comparison, on caffeine consumption: traditionally a pound of coffee will last me four to six months, as I like to vary it with tea and the occasional coke; tend to consume it more frequently when out, and so less at home; and don't care for it in the summer, for reasons I hope are blindingly obvious. The pound I just finished was on track to be consumed in three weeks, until I got sick.)
But, thanks to a Valentine's Day gift of coffee (the one from Kenya)--coffee so good I drink it on its own, in the small cups--I am back to work. Today: conference proposal (dare I submit another paper with 'Hugo Grotius' in the title? I've been thinking about the story told about law in the Cathedral chapter of The Trial), followed by Shakespeare and dissertation writing. I love my job.
13.2.08
9.2.08
LINK: I don't think much of this essay on why 'southern' literature is considered a valid category (as opposed to 'new england' literature, e.g.)--long sections on Self and Other have that effect on me--but the epigram is well-chosen:
Even today the Northern visitor hankers to see eroded hills and rednecks…to sniff the effluvium of backwoods-and-sandhill subhumanity and to see at least one barn burn at midnight. So he looks at me with crafty misgivings, as if to say, “Well, you do talk rather glibly about Kierkegaard and Sartre…but after all, you’re only fooling, aren’t you? Don’t you, sometimes, go out secretly by owl-light to drink swampwater and feed on sowbelly and collard greens?”
—George B. Tindall, in the 1963 speech “The Idea of the South.”
MAKING FUN OF THE ASPIRATIONAL BOOKSHELF: A worthy aim, accomplished to good effect here.
Now, I should note that for many years, I possessed an aspirational bookshelf. In high school, I had a relatively high disposable income and absolutely nothing to spend it on except books, music and coffee. Combine this with a decent local used bookstore option, and I'd frequently stock up on things I thought I might one day like to read. In the time between then and now, most of those books have been read. The ones that remain I will get to soon enough. I feel like this constitutes an exception to the 'aspirational bookshelf' rule, though others may disagree.
Grad school also alters the dynamics of book-ownership: I won't get rid of anything on the 'political science/political theory' shelves because, however vanishingly small the chances are that I will have to teach American Political Parties in my life, they all function as reference works. Then again, the idea of getting rid of books for any reason is difficult for me to conceptualize. I try to be careful about what I buy; anything that I've actually read has become tied up with my life in some way, and getting rid of a book seems like a small act of violence (I assume that feeling will go away once I top 1000 books or so, but I'm not there yet).
All that said--owning a book because you want to look like the sort of person who would read that kind of book?--seems like a mockery of the point of reading.
Now, I should note that for many years, I possessed an aspirational bookshelf. In high school, I had a relatively high disposable income and absolutely nothing to spend it on except books, music and coffee. Combine this with a decent local used bookstore option, and I'd frequently stock up on things I thought I might one day like to read. In the time between then and now, most of those books have been read. The ones that remain I will get to soon enough. I feel like this constitutes an exception to the 'aspirational bookshelf' rule, though others may disagree.
Grad school also alters the dynamics of book-ownership: I won't get rid of anything on the 'political science/political theory' shelves because, however vanishingly small the chances are that I will have to teach American Political Parties in my life, they all function as reference works. Then again, the idea of getting rid of books for any reason is difficult for me to conceptualize. I try to be careful about what I buy; anything that I've actually read has become tied up with my life in some way, and getting rid of a book seems like a small act of violence (I assume that feeling will go away once I top 1000 books or so, but I'm not there yet).
All that said--owning a book because you want to look like the sort of person who would read that kind of book?--seems like a mockery of the point of reading.
7.2.08
I am occasionally asked by my friends not quite past the prospectus stage what it's like to be ABD. The usual response is to say that it's better. Doing the work you set out for yourself is very gratifying (indeed, it has to be, or else you're in the wrong line of work), and whatever one might say in defence of the earlier stages of a PhD program, you're doing the work someone else thinks fit for you.
The flipside to this professionalization is that you acquire the responsibilities of a professional--not surprising when one reflects on it logically, but nonetheless shocking when encountered in real life. I now set aside one day a week (usually Thursday) to respond to emails, do research for my RA assignment, work on my syllabus, and do whatever other tasks need to be finished. I am beginning to worry, however, since one day is proving to not be enough time so far this semester, and I've not yet made it halfway through February (which means no midterm grading yet).
My caffeine intake, already increased once by notable measure this semester, will likely need to be increased again. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons, indeed.
The flipside to this professionalization is that you acquire the responsibilities of a professional--not surprising when one reflects on it logically, but nonetheless shocking when encountered in real life. I now set aside one day a week (usually Thursday) to respond to emails, do research for my RA assignment, work on my syllabus, and do whatever other tasks need to be finished. I am beginning to worry, however, since one day is proving to not be enough time so far this semester, and I've not yet made it halfway through February (which means no midterm grading yet).
My caffeine intake, already increased once by notable measure this semester, will likely need to be increased again. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons, indeed.
THE NEW R.E.M. SINGLE: Here and elsewhere. It's not completely embarrassing, which is progress. The tenor of Vulture's post reminds me of something I saw on TEV the other day:
Whatever else one might say, R.E.M. has at least had the decency to wander in the wilderness for most of the last decade.
It's commonplace to observe that Fitzgerald's dictum "There are no second acts in American lives" is no longer worth the paper it's printed on. No, what's dizzying is that there's no longer even a decent sized intermission between acts.
Whatever else one might say, R.E.M. has at least had the decency to wander in the wilderness for most of the last decade.
5.2.08
THE PERPETUAL DECLINE OF BOOK REVIEWING AND LITERACY: I've been sitting on this CJR essay on the state of book reviewing for a few days. As I love late-period Lenin, I enjoyed this:
The rest is predictably great: thoughtful, well-written, and long enough to address its topic seriously. Read read.
(link via The Elegant Variation)
In this view, only the review (or book) that is immediately understood by the greatest number of readers can be permitted to see the light of day. Anything else smacks of “elitism.” This is a coarse and pernicious dogma—a dogma that is at the center of the anti-intellectual tradition that is alive and well within America’s newspapers. It is why most newspapers barely bother with reviews. And it is why most newspaper reviews are not worth reading. I sought to subvert this dogma. Of course, ideally I wanted what Otis Chandler in his heyday had wanted: mass and class. But if it came down to a choice between the two, I knew I’d go for class every time. In literary affairs, I was always a closet Leninist: better fewer, but better.
The rest is predictably great: thoughtful, well-written, and long enough to address its topic seriously. Read read.
(link via The Elegant Variation)
BEEN BUSY: Running around to complete fellowship stuff, hence the absence of posting. I will reward myself for a weekend of good work by returning to my dissertation for the rest of the day, and trying to decide whether this book is worth the $150 Amazon wants for it. Answer: if it really is a critical edition, yes. Fortunately, it's on Google Books, so I can give it a look before purchasing.
1.2.08
THE CHILD-MAN,
OR
MULTIVARIATE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS:
As a 26 year-old white guy, I feel the need to defend my people. Start with this post by Rod Dreher, which quotes a piece by another writer, thus:
You may have noticed that these two examples do not contrast well, despite both containing the aforementioned 26 year-old white males. For example, 1965 guy apparently lives in a rural or suburban area (hence buying a house 'in the next town'), while 2008 guy lives in Chicago. The 1965 guy also most likely has only a high school-level education, while 2008 guy spent an extra four years making no money in order to get a college degree. One could go on, but having detected at least three variables at work over two (caricatured) hypotheticals, I feel it safe to say the causation arises from multiple sources and we should be wary of any simple explanations of the difference between the two. As it happens, I enjoy the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so I am aware that, even at the turn of last century, single, college educated men also lived with other single men, spent their time carousing with women, and putting off getting married until their late 20s.
This is not to say the article doesn't touch on a real problem--the absence of strong masculine role models and the loosening of collective norms about 'acceptable' bounds of adult life--but it's not a new problem, and cherry-picking two non-comparable cases doesn't strengthen the argument.
OR
MULTIVARIATE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS:
As a 26 year-old white guy, I feel the need to defend my people. Start with this post by Rod Dreher, which quotes a piece by another writer, thus:
It’s 1965 and you’re a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you’re married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister’s class. You’ve already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you’re renting an apartment in your parents’ two-family house, but you’re saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you’re an adult!
Now meet the twenty-first-century you, also 26. You’ve finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face—and then it’s off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. They come from everywhere: California, Tokyo, Alaska, Australia. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?
You may have noticed that these two examples do not contrast well, despite both containing the aforementioned 26 year-old white males. For example, 1965 guy apparently lives in a rural or suburban area (hence buying a house 'in the next town'), while 2008 guy lives in Chicago. The 1965 guy also most likely has only a high school-level education, while 2008 guy spent an extra four years making no money in order to get a college degree. One could go on, but having detected at least three variables at work over two (caricatured) hypotheticals, I feel it safe to say the causation arises from multiple sources and we should be wary of any simple explanations of the difference between the two. As it happens, I enjoy the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so I am aware that, even at the turn of last century, single, college educated men also lived with other single men, spent their time carousing with women, and putting off getting married until their late 20s.
This is not to say the article doesn't touch on a real problem--the absence of strong masculine role models and the loosening of collective norms about 'acceptable' bounds of adult life--but it's not a new problem, and cherry-picking two non-comparable cases doesn't strengthen the argument.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY:
Conservatism effectively reminds us of the dangers of optimism, rejecting the idea that the future, of necessity, will see the resolution of our current problems. It stumbles, however, over pessimism. Regardless of one's political allegiances, there is a tendency to venerate the past and seek to bring it into the future: I doubt any of my liberal friends would object to a return of FDR or LBJ-style government (or governing majorities), though the specific policies they'd wish to see advocated would change. The problem is more acute for conservatism insomuch as it accepts Rousseau's critique in the Second Discourse--and, surprisingly, I think much modern conservatism does--history, technology, and amour propre combine to produce successive degradations. As each finds widespread acceptance within society, each becomes difficult--if not impossible--to undo. It helps, by way of counteracting this tendency, to be reminded that it was ever thus; we perpetually worry that we are on the edge, but never quite go over.
On this, David Hume, from the Treatise:
Didn't I see this in The New Yorker a month or two ago?
Conservatism effectively reminds us of the dangers of optimism, rejecting the idea that the future, of necessity, will see the resolution of our current problems. It stumbles, however, over pessimism. Regardless of one's political allegiances, there is a tendency to venerate the past and seek to bring it into the future: I doubt any of my liberal friends would object to a return of FDR or LBJ-style government (or governing majorities), though the specific policies they'd wish to see advocated would change. The problem is more acute for conservatism insomuch as it accepts Rousseau's critique in the Second Discourse--and, surprisingly, I think much modern conservatism does--history, technology, and amour propre combine to produce successive degradations. As each finds widespread acceptance within society, each becomes difficult--if not impossible--to undo. It helps, by way of counteracting this tendency, to be reminded that it was ever thus; we perpetually worry that we are on the edge, but never quite go over.
On this, David Hume, from the Treatise:
...the greatest part of men seem agreed to convert reading into an amusement, and to reject everything that requires any considerable degree of attention to be comprehended.
Didn't I see this in The New Yorker a month or two ago?
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