Why is coverage of the arts not as good as it once was on UK television? … Read the rest
All entries by this author
What is Elitism?
Jun 6th, 2003 | By Ophelia BensonFashionable Nonsense is a fabric of many threads, a sea fed by many rivers, a library with many volumes, a dog with many fleas. But there are also a few themes or core assumptions that play a role – that are ‘foundational’ – in most if not all of these many mansions: anti-essentialism, anti-realism, relativism, pretensions to transgression and rebellion and épater-ing; projects of unmasking, exposing, demystifying – every FNer a Toto pulling back the curtain that hides the Wizard; concern with hidden agendas and concealed power drives; and various kinds of make-believe anti-elitism.
The elitism question is a complicated matter, not least because of the widely-observed paradox that claims of anti-elitism emanate from academics who write a language of … Read the rest
The N.Y. Times on the N.Y. Times
Jun 6th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Many reporters and editors were disaffected in wake of Blair and Bragg.… Read the rest
Two N.Y. Times Editors Resign
Jun 6th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd fall on swords in aftermath of Jayson Blair fraud.… Read the rest
Problematizing the Dominant Narrative
Jun 6th, 2003 12:54 am | By Ophelia BensonI do get to have fun, toiling and slaving here at the mills of B and W. I browse Google and sometimes I do find peculiar gems.
This one for example: a review of a book whose very title reeks of fashion: Dis/locating Cultures/Identitites, Traditions, and Third World Feminism. Got all that? You think the author stuffed enough Right On signposts in there for one title? The cute ‘Dis/locating,’ the buzzwords ‘cultures’ and ‘identities’ slammed together with that artful /, and finishing off with a flourish with Third World Feminism. There, that’s all the bases touched, Narayan must have thought in satisfaction. No one can say I don’t know the patois.
And that’s only the title, and only the … Read the rest
Guardians of the truth?
Jun 5th, 2003 5:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonIf you click on the Guardian story link in the ‘Post-Orientalism” entry below, you’ll find it doesn’t work. Here’s why – from the Guardian’s web site today:
… Read the restA report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, “The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.” The sense was that the US had no economic
A Glaring Omission
Jun 5th, 2003 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’ A Devil’s Chaplain lately. It’s not available in the States yet, but my colleague sent it to me from the UK. It’s great stuff, of course – Dawkins is a brilliant polemicist, essayist, explainer, persuader. His review of Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures/Fashionable Nonsense is hilarious (though of course it could hardly help it, having such rich material to work with). And Dawkins mentions one fact in passing which I feel compelled to make a fuss about.
… Read the restSokal was inspired to do this [his famous hoax] by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt’s Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science, an important book which deserves to become as well known in Britain
Review of A Devil’s Chaplain
Jun 5th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Praise for Richard Dawkins’ “marvellously contemptuous dismissal of ‘postmodernism’” and more.… Read the rest
What Separation of Church and State?
Jun 5th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
What the Bush administration is doing to make religion even more intrusively mandatory in American life.… Read the rest
Post-Orientalism
Jun 5th, 2003 12:05 am | By Ophelia BensonMy colleague and I have been discussing (or arguing about, if you like) the
Guardian story which reports that Paul Wolfowitz said the Iraq war was about oil. I have more doubts and qualms about the war than Jeremy does, but then as he concedes, I live in the US whereas he lives in the UK: the differences in our respective heads of state could account for our different views all by themselves. But one thing we do agree on is the irredeemable awfulness of Islamofascism, and that there is no proper opposition to it (with, as he points out, the honourable exception of Christopher Hitchens) on the Left.
Why is that? I think it has to do with the … Read the rest
Interview with Azar Nafisi
Jun 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Ideology, politicization of every part of life, intimidation, the value of discourse.… Read the rest
Only ‘Faith’ Schools Allowed to Discriminate
Jun 4th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Churches successfully lobbied UK government, won right to fire gays in religious schools.… Read the rest
Vice-Chancellors Disagree With Clarke
Jun 3rd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
An instrumental view of education is not the way to go.… Read the rest
Can We Stop Hearing About ‘Grief Counseling’ Now?
Jun 3rd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Those people rushed to the scene to ‘help’ don’t, research has finally shown.… Read the rest
Exemption for ‘Faith’ Schools
Jun 3rd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Employment bill could allow religious schools to sack gay teachers.… Read the rest
Ee-lim Anate the Negative
Jun 2nd, 2003 1:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell I’m always telling people, in my annoying way, that ‘negative’ doesn’t mean bad or critical or disapproving or pessimistic or skeptical or cynical or hostile. That if you want to call something any of those, you should use those words, and not the word ‘negative’ which 1. doesn’t mean any of those and 2. if you do use it as a pointless euphemism for those other words is vague and woolly and non-specific and confusing. By the same token ‘positive’ doesn’t mean approving or friendly or optimistic or patriotic or cheerful or warm or helpful. There’s a bizarre kind of covert thought-control going on in the translation of all words conveying disagreement and dissent into ‘negative’ and all words … Read the rest
Climbing Trees to Get to the Moon
Jun 2nd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Steven Pinker on why genetic enhancement is not inevitable.… Read the rest
What Does ‘Negative’ Mean?
Jun 1st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Evelyn Fox Keller and Richard Lewontin discuss some epistemological issues.… Read the rest
Who Mourns the Gepids?
Jun 1st, 2003 | By Robert DavisThe answer to the question in the title is "No one," but it will
take a while to get to the reasons. I thought about the Gepids as I drove through
the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico through incomparable scenery,
a lot of history, and often uncomfortable knowledge about the present, much
of it filtered through the novels of fellow Oklahomans, Tony Hillerman and Ron
Querry. Their books and other sources touch on problems of the contemporary
Navajo, but they are more noted for their celebration of the coherence of Navajo
culture and the sense of "hozho," of oneness with the beauty of the
world. This theme is attractive to many Anglos who buy into a nostalgia for… Read the rest
Are Standards and Expertise a Bad Thing?
May 31st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Sarah Bryan Miller wonders, just what is an elitist anyway?… Read the rest