People are agents whose freedoms matter, not just patients with living standards.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Apostasy
Feb 2nd, 2004 9:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonOur reader Chris of Intelligent Life alerted me to this wonderful essay by Frank Lentricchia. It should be required reading for all aspiring ‘Literary Theorists.’ I want to quote and quote and quote. But read the whole article (the whole shorter article: this is a reduced version of the original from Lingua Franca.)
… Read the restOver the last ten years, I’ve pretty much stopped reading literary criticism, because most of it isn’t literary. But criticism it is of a sort—the sort that stems from the sense that one is morally superior to the writers that one is supposedly describing. This posture of superiority is assumed when those writers represent the major islands of Western literary tradition, the central cultural engine—so
Hipper Than Thou
Feb 2nd, 2004 7:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’ve just been browsing Scott McLemee’s site and seen so many items I want to point out to our readers that I’ll just have to do it here.
There is a highly amusing review of David Brooks’ silly Bobos in Paradise for a start.
David Brooks, a writer for the conservative Weekly Standard, is also an amateur sociologist; which is to say, someone who makes mental footnotes to the New York Times…The argument of Bobos in Paradise is simple, and the author restates it every two pages (perhaps as a courtesy to the people he is discussing, who must do their reading between cell phone messages).
But amusing is not all it is, because silly is not all Brooks is. … Read the rest
Robert Merton and Serendipity
Feb 2nd, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The importance of accident and luck in research.… Read the rest
Alternative to Female Genital Mutilation?
Feb 2nd, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Would a symbolic cut prevent worse, or endorse a terrible practice?… Read the rest
Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India
Feb 2nd, 2004 | By Robert NolaMeera Nanda’s book Prophets Facing Backward is an extraordinary and compelling book. Few in the West are aware of the alarming confluence of ideas arising out of the contemporary nationalistic politics of India with its endorsement of ‘Vedic science’ and the dominant postmodernist, social constructivist and sociological trends in science studies in the West. Nanda’s book is an intellectual bombshell dropped on this potent combination. No one interested in the ways in which science and culture can interact should ignore this book and the challenging case it makes against the prevailing orthodoxies of much that passes for Western science ‘studies’. It should serve for years to come as a reference point for what can go wrong in science studies when … Read the rest
Reading Instructions
Feb 1st, 2004 8:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonI see where Socialism in an Age of Waiting has picked up my plug for Hazlitt from a few days ago. I’m pleased about that – the more advertising Hazlitt gets the better, as far as I’m concerned. So since that N&C is now below the fold, as the saying goes, i.e. in the archive where no one will ever look at it again – why I’ll just revive the subject for this month. SiaW think I even understated the case –
… Read the restVia Butterflies and Wheels, there’s a collection of essays by William Hazlitt of whom Ophelia Benson writes: “It’s a permanent, settled grievance of mine that Hazlitt is so little-known. I think he’s the single most inexplicably obscure writer
Silent Protestors at BORI
Feb 1st, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Citizens protest vandalism at Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.… Read the rest
Empty Bookshelves and Closed Minds?
Feb 1st, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Sumanta Banerjee on censorship by fundamentalist religious protests.… Read the rest
Evolution is a ‘Buzzword’
Feb 1st, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Not going to be teaching the monkeys-to-man sort of thing.… Read the rest
Georgia Removes ‘Evolution’
Feb 1st, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
State education officials delete controversial word from science guidelines.… Read the rest
Saffron Infusion: Hindutva, History, and Education
Feb 1st, 2004 | By Latha MenonIntroduction
On 5 January, 2004, the renowned Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune was vandalized by some 150 thugs. Priceless manuscripts and artefacts were destroyed. Those responsible declared themselves to be members of the ‘Sambhaji Brigade’, linked to the Maratha Seva Sangh, a regional organization with anti-Brahmin sentiments. They apparently chose this method to protest against allegedly insulting remarks made against their hero, Shivaji, in a recently published book by the American historian James W. Laine.
The link with the Institute was somewhat indirect: Laine had acknowledged the help of several academics at Bhandarkar with the translation of certain manuscripts. The book concerned, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, has been withdrawn by Oxford University Press, and the author has … Read the rest
Fizz
Feb 1st, 2004 12:24 am | By Ophelia BensonThere is an amusing post here by a blogger who is eccentric enough to read B&W. He’s just been reading a N&C from back in early January, the one about academostars – which sent him to an article by Scott McLemee in the Chronicle, which prompted some reflections on Stanley Fish’s Reagonomical views of the merits of overpaying academostars.
… Read the restTo be fair, Fish may have a point: his presence in an English department may draw starry-eyed grad students into the department and increase funding for more useless graduate seminars on esoteric topics that will prove of little or no use to anyone teaching at most universities. In this respect, the “material conditions” of the other professors in the department
What Does Rosenhan’s Hoax Show?
Jan 31st, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
That labels influence diagnosis? That diagnosis is mere labeling?… Read the rest
This is Parody, Right?
Jan 31st, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
No, apparently not. Amazing stuff.… Read the rest
False Consciousness
Jan 30th, 2004 5:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo here’s Nawal El Sadaawi, saying the demonstrations of women against the French proposal to ban the hijab are a ‘signal example of how “false consciousness” makes women enemies of their freedom, enemies of themselves, an example of how they are used in the political game being played by the Islamic fundamentalist movement in its bid for power.’ I have noticed repeatedly that a lot of Westerners who oppose the ban have an unpleasant (to put it mildly) tendency to accuse supporters and semi-supporters of racism and colonialist ways of thinking – as if there were total unanimity among people of Muslim background. But of course there isn’t. Far from it. Of course many Muslims and people of Muslim … Read the rest
Nawal El-Saadawi in Al-Ahram
Jan 30th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Why should the head of women in particular be considered so dangerous that it must be made to disappear?’… Read the rest
A Past Master at Having It Both Ways
Jan 30th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘trying to create a kind of moral-political Theory of Everything, he gets badly out of his depth’… Read the rest
Hazlitt Speaks His Mind
Jan 29th, 2004 6:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonSomething put me in mind of Hazlitt’s famous Letter to William Gifford this morning – so I thought I might as well give you a bit of the flavour of it. It’s a permanent, settled grievance of mine that Hazlitt is so little-known. I think he’s the single most inexplicably obscure writer in English. He ought to be at least as famous as Orwell and far more so than Lamb or Carlyle. He’s an absolutely brilliant, dazzling writer, and he’s no slouch as a thinker, either.
The letter to Gifford starts off briskly:
… Read the restSir, You have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do not like; and it will be the object of this
Time & Newsweek Have a Responsibility
Jan 29th, 2004 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
To people in bookless small towns who want to learn about ideas.… Read the rest