It’s about writing novels rather than sexual secrets.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Eichmann, Everyman as Genocidaire
Aug 28th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
It seemed the right thing to do at the time.… Read the rest
David Cesarani’s Biography of Eichmann
Aug 28th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Scrupulously objective; the hatchet-job is reserved for Hannah Arendt.… Read the rest
1893–1895–1897–1899: Or How Norman N. Holland Gave Game, Set, and Match to Frederick Crews
Aug 28th, 2004 | By Robert WilcocksThe situation of the present state of psychoanalysis and of the current reputation of Sigmund Freud is well documented and cogently (and patiently!) presented in Professor Crews’s “Reply to Holland.”(1) In my view, and in the opinion of several other Freud scholars, the continuing ability of Freudian rhetoric to deceive is even more dangerous and difficult to resolve than Crews allows.
And, alas, the kind of staged public jousting whereby Fred Crews will accept the publication for the Spring/Summer issue of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (vol. 9, no. 1) of “a commentary on both submissions [that of Holland and the reply of Crews] by the psychiatrist Peter Barglow” seems to be `loaded’ from the start.
Barglow is a … Read the rest
Googling for Laughs
Aug 28th, 2004 2:17 am | By Ophelia BensonI’m a kind and generous person, and I’ve just been enjoying a good laugh, so I’ll let you enjoy it too. It’s funny how I found this essay. It’s on Alan Sokal’s site, but that’s not how I found it (there are a lot of articles there, happily, and I haven’t read them all yet). No, I found it by typing Sandra Harding and – a certain unkind adjective, into google. What a lot came up! I’ll have to try it with different unkind adjectives in the future. What a pity that life is so short – I’m sure to miss some interesting stuff. Quite a lot. But I found a lot, too.
This essay is about Social Text… Read the rest
More Profundity
Aug 27th, 2004 8:14 pm | By Ophelia BensonMore Harding. Why? Because there is more, that’s why. Because you don’t know the half of it. Because that previous comment barely scratched the surface. Because it just keeps getting worse. Because my jaw keeps dropping until I can barely use the damn thing to talk and eat anymore. Because this book was published by Cornell University Press. I repeat – this book was published by Cornell University Press.
And because I’m a woman, god damn it, and a feminist, and this kind of bilge is enough to discredit both categories. Feminist! She calls herself a feminist! She links what she’s doing with feminism! It’s an outrage! Well you see what I mean about the jaw. Same thing with the … Read the rest
Common Sense Good, Political Correctness Bad
Aug 27th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And the difference is entirely self-evident. Right.… Read the rest
Excluded
Aug 27th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Blunkett bans animal rights campaigner Jerry Vlasak.… Read the rest
Free Speech Shouldn’t Cover Death Threats
Aug 27th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Blunkett was right to ban animal rights ‘activist.’… Read the rest
Outrage at Harker on OutRage
Aug 27th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Music is important to black people, and not being beaten to death is important to gay people.… Read the rest
Hey, it’s Popular
Aug 27th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Music is very important to black people,’ so if it advocates killing gays – er – shut up?… Read the rest
Work of Art Thrown in Bin and Badly Damaged
Aug 27th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Tragedy at Tate when cleaner throws away bin liner filled with waste paper.… Read the rest
From Multiculturalism to Where?
Aug 26th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The city on a hill where everyone celebrates differences isn’t working out.… Read the rest
Margaret Talbot on Munchausen’s by Proxy
Aug 26th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Naming a syndrome can create it, and when is a crime a ‘disorder’?… Read the rest
‘A Good Book Should Make You Cry’?
Aug 26th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The lachrymose world of the problem novel for children.… Read the rest
Epistemology for Toddlers
Aug 25th, 2004 11:40 pm | By Ophelia BensonI mentioned that I’ve been reading Sandra Harding. I have. Therefore I need to vent. I also need to write in short simple clause-free declarative sentences, because that’s the way Harding writes, and it’s catching.
Reading Harding is a very strange experience. I keep wondering – huh? What happened? Why did this book get published? Why didn’t anyone shove it back at her and say (at the very least), ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to re-write this for grown-ups. Children don’t read books about epistemology.’ Why does she write the way she does? Why do people let her? And then publish it? And then why do other people buy the books and read them? And why, godgivemestrength, why do people … Read the rest
Undercurrent
Aug 25th, 2004 7:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonJust to gather them all in one place. Jonathan Derbyshire has a post about the vexed (especially around here – we vex the damn thing to death) matter of the, shall we say, tender-mindedness of some parts of the left toward Islamism.
There seems to me to be an essential continuity between the stance adopted towards radical Islam by the intellectual left broadly conceived (and not just the SWP), and certain of the attitudes that characterised the so-called ‘New Left’ in the 1960s, and which were brilliantly diagnosed by Irving Howe in a wonderful 1965 essay entitled ‘New Styles in “Leftism”‘…
Yes, I like Howe, and he looks better all the time. He nailed the anti-intellectual aspect of the New … Read the rest
Convicted Murderer Flees Extradition
Aug 25th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Chooses ‘green of life’ over ‘grey of legal punishment’. For himself, that is.… Read the rest
Salim Mansur on Selective Outrage
Aug 25th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The victims are black and non-Arab; the victimizers are of Arab origin. … Read the rest
Outrage! Plan Mobo Protest
Aug 25th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Gay rights group to pressure the BBC not to broadcast the music of black artists who promote homophobia.… Read the rest