My hunch is no, if one thinks that blogs could somehow replace scholarly books. However, I predict that once the majority of academic journals are available online and once the next generation of scholars gets comfortable with accessing electronic archives, we might see a shift in emphasis from the book to the article. I hope so anyway. Given that university presses are cutting back on the number of acadmemic titles that they publish each year, I think its ridiculous to expect assistant professors in the humanities to have published at least one and, increasingly, two books in order to get tenure. A few strong articles should suffice to establish the young professors' merit
Scott McLemee's piece, A Dogged Pursuit, is more about the fact that university presses have established blogs. It remains to be seen whether these blogs will function more or less as electronic catalogs, or if they will become a discursive site in which the ideas in the books are debated and discussed. I'm skeptical about whether the latter can work well due to the obvious conflict of interest involved. After all, the university presses want to promote their books, and its not true, particularly when book buying is concerned, that all publicity is good publicity. Besides, don't journals and reviews already cover the books anyway?
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Skeptical About Angrefristloven?
For the benefit of those readers who may think that I've become excessively pro-Scandinavia in my socio-political world view, I'm reprinting the following comments of mine. I posted them in response to Jill Walker's question: does iTunes have to respect angrefristloven?, a Norwegian "regrets deadline law" intended to to protect consumers from impulsive purchases outside of a shop. You'll have to read Jill's post or go to law school in Norway to get the specifics about this situation.
My comments, unedited (except for removing an emotive icon that I impulsively used):
A law to protect consumers from impulsive purchases?!?
Now, in general, I like Scandinavia's commitment to maintaining the welfare state in a neocon/neoliberal era where 'free-market' values means Big Corporations rule, but this sounds a bit excessive.
(1) Isn't the impulsive part half the fun? I mean, in retrospect, I probably didn't need my Edgar Allan Poe action figure, my squish Bush stress reliever, my numerous ape artifacts, or the various band t-shirts purchased at the end of a fantastic set, when my ears are ringing & I'm soaked in beer. Come to think of it, I probably didn't need that last beer (though we'll confirm that) tomorrow morning. But, as G. Bataille might put it, what's life w/out a little excess expenditure?
(2) At the risk of sounding like my Dad: Whatever happened to responsibility? Or learning from one's mistakes? I'm all for the government stepping in to help consumers in cases of fraud, but I don't expect Uncle Sam to help me get the money back for the two garish King Kong ties I bought on e-bay but never wear (actually, only one is truly hideous and has never been worn; the other made an appearance last Halloween)...
(3) Please tell me the generous no-questions-asked return policy doesn't apply to underwear purchases.
Cue the Sid Vicious: "Regrets, I've 'ad a few. But then again, too few to men-tion..."
Note: After posting my smart-ass remarks in the wee hours of the morning, I see that I skimmed over the part about the law applying to purchases outside of shops, so some of my examples are clearly irrelevant. I assure everyone that I normally am not so cavalier with my blog comments, but I consider Jill a friend. And even though we've never met, the fact that she's dating Scott entitles me (by an obscure piece of Chicago legislation) to give her extra shite.
By the way, Jill, Happy Birthday!
My comments, unedited (except for removing an emotive icon that I impulsively used):
A law to protect consumers from impulsive purchases?!?
Now, in general, I like Scandinavia's commitment to maintaining the welfare state in a neocon/neoliberal era where 'free-market' values means Big Corporations rule, but this sounds a bit excessive.
(1) Isn't the impulsive part half the fun? I mean, in retrospect, I probably didn't need my Edgar Allan Poe action figure, my squish Bush stress reliever, my numerous ape artifacts, or the various band t-shirts purchased at the end of a fantastic set, when my ears are ringing & I'm soaked in beer. Come to think of it, I probably didn't need that last beer (though we'll confirm that) tomorrow morning. But, as G. Bataille might put it, what's life w/out a little excess expenditure?
(2) At the risk of sounding like my Dad: Whatever happened to responsibility? Or learning from one's mistakes? I'm all for the government stepping in to help consumers in cases of fraud, but I don't expect Uncle Sam to help me get the money back for the two garish King Kong ties I bought on e-bay but never wear (actually, only one is truly hideous and has never been worn; the other made an appearance last Halloween)...
(3) Please tell me the generous no-questions-asked return policy doesn't apply to underwear purchases.
Cue the Sid Vicious: "Regrets, I've 'ad a few. But then again, too few to men-tion..."
Note: After posting my smart-ass remarks in the wee hours of the morning, I see that I skimmed over the part about the law applying to purchases outside of shops, so some of my examples are clearly irrelevant. I assure everyone that I normally am not so cavalier with my blog comments, but I consider Jill a friend. And even though we've never met, the fact that she's dating Scott entitles me (by an obscure piece of Chicago legislation) to give her extra shite.
By the way, Jill, Happy Birthday!
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Poet Declies to Dine at White House
The Nation has published an eloquent letter by the poet Shannon Olds to Laura Bush in which she explains to the First Lady why she is declining to read at the National Book Festival, attend a dinner at the Library of Congress, or eat breakfast at the White Houuse. Here's the close of the letter:
But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.
What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.
So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.
Nicely put, Ms. Olds. Obviously such symbolic gestures are invisible to the President, who was oblivious to the chaos and misery in New Orleans until his aids finally sat him down in front of a TV, but one wonders whether the First Lady is aware of the suffering that her husband's adminstration has contributed to directly through its reckless policies. If so, does she have anything resembling a guilty conscience?
Read Sharon Olds' letter in its entirety online at The Nation: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame.
But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.
What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.
So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.
Nicely put, Ms. Olds. Obviously such symbolic gestures are invisible to the President, who was oblivious to the chaos and misery in New Orleans until his aids finally sat him down in front of a TV, but one wonders whether the First Lady is aware of the suffering that her husband's adminstration has contributed to directly through its reckless policies. If so, does she have anything resembling a guilty conscience?
Read Sharon Olds' letter in its entirety online at The Nation: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Materiality of Language/Text/Communication in Beckett's Molloy
Reading notes from Beckett's Molloy, one of my all-time favorite novels...
A. Trope/Theme: the materiality of language/text/ communication
B. Annotated list of relevant passages:
1. Incomprehensible marks: When Molloy receives back the pages he writes, he cannot comprehend the marks that are written there (3). The other's writing appears to him as meaningless traces. This is the first indication we get that Molloy's relationship to language is peculiar, to put it mildly. For the rest of the novel, we know to be alert to issues pertaining to signification and interpretation.
2. Freedom to obliterate meaning: Reflecting on his sense of freedom, Molloy acknowledges that he doesn't know what the word "free" means. Nonetheless, he suggests that this is the word he intends to apply to his condition. Here, Molloy associates Freedom with destorying or blackening texts, reducing them in both instances to meaningless matter. He speculates that he is free "to do nothing, to know... the laws of the mind... of my mind, that water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery" (10). Given the violent turn of events near the close of part I and how they transpire, the manner in which Molloy associates freedom with meaninglessness here becomes quite ominous in retrospect.
(Political aside: Freedom = meaninglessness. Is it just me, or has that equation become frighteningly apparent in the policy and rhetoric of a recent president who is notorious for his inarticulate speech and oxmoronic claims?)
3. Molloy's coded communications with his mother: Molloy doesn't listen to his Ma's constant “clattering gabble" and attempts to communicate with her by "knocking on her skull" (15). However, because of his mother's short-term-memory loss, which makes her unable to count reliably, the code Molloy develops, in which the number of knocks on the head corresponds to a basic concept, fails. In the end, Molloy finds "a more effective means of putting the idea of money into her head": "thumps of the fist, on her skull" (15). That is, brute force or violence becomes the means of 'understanding.'
4. Failed interpellation by the policeman: Apparently in violation of an anti-loitering ordinance, or some law intended to maintain "public order, public decency," Molloy attracts the attention of a policeman who asks him for his papers. Molloy responds by thrusting bits of newspaper that he carries with him to "wipe [him]self...when [he has] a stool" (19) under the policeman's nose. Instead of presenting documents that would establish his official identity, Molloy, who at this point in the text is still nameless, provides the representative of the Law a text that is literally meaningless waste, i.e., old shit-smeared papers.
In a sense, however, Molloy's gesture speaks a sort of truth. He is, from the perspective of mainstream society, nothing but shit or waste.
5. Impermeability of the TLS: Like many homeless people, Molloy uses old newspaper as insulation to keep himself warm in the winter months. He notes that the Times Literary Supplement was "admirably adapted to this purpose, of a never failing toughness and impermeability," even to his farts (30). Here, as McLuhan put it, the medium is the message, meanging what...? Beckett's choice of this particular intertext must be intentional. He is thumbing his nose at the British literary establishment. But this scene is more than a literary joke. It's important to note how use trumps meaning in Molloy's relationship to the TLS. Dare we describe Molloy as a pragmatist?
6. Icy words: Reflecting on how he "had been living so far from words so long," Molloy recalls how, at the time, he had been unable to recall the name of his town and his own name. This period appears to have been near the beginning of Molloy's deteriorating relationship with language: "even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names" (31). (This "waves and particles" remark intrigues me. I want to connect it to the cosmological 'perspectivism' that is a principle of modern physics). But Molloy suggests that his ability to remember the past has been compromised"...what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies took, foully named" (31). For Molloy, language has become akin to a meaningless force of nature that batters his body and threatens to overwhelm him.
7. Lousse's parrot: The bird speaks expressions that, obviously, it doesn't comprehend (38). The parrot doesn't intend to say anything meaningful, it simply repeats sounds. (Not unlike a student who aspires only to parrot correct answers.) Nonetheless, Molloy claims he understands the bird better than Lousse. In what sense might this absurd claim be true?
8. Writing as decomposition/blackening pages (74): …
Anyone with further additions, please post 'em!
A. Trope/Theme: the materiality of language/text/ communication
B. Annotated list of relevant passages:
1. Incomprehensible marks: When Molloy receives back the pages he writes, he cannot comprehend the marks that are written there (3). The other's writing appears to him as meaningless traces. This is the first indication we get that Molloy's relationship to language is peculiar, to put it mildly. For the rest of the novel, we know to be alert to issues pertaining to signification and interpretation.
2. Freedom to obliterate meaning: Reflecting on his sense of freedom, Molloy acknowledges that he doesn't know what the word "free" means. Nonetheless, he suggests that this is the word he intends to apply to his condition. Here, Molloy associates Freedom with destorying or blackening texts, reducing them in both instances to meaningless matter. He speculates that he is free "to do nothing, to know... the laws of the mind... of my mind, that water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery" (10). Given the violent turn of events near the close of part I and how they transpire, the manner in which Molloy associates freedom with meaninglessness here becomes quite ominous in retrospect.
(Political aside: Freedom = meaninglessness. Is it just me, or has that equation become frighteningly apparent in the policy and rhetoric of a recent president who is notorious for his inarticulate speech and oxmoronic claims?)
3. Molloy's coded communications with his mother: Molloy doesn't listen to his Ma's constant “clattering gabble" and attempts to communicate with her by "knocking on her skull" (15). However, because of his mother's short-term-memory loss, which makes her unable to count reliably, the code Molloy develops, in which the number of knocks on the head corresponds to a basic concept, fails. In the end, Molloy finds "a more effective means of putting the idea of money into her head": "thumps of the fist, on her skull" (15). That is, brute force or violence becomes the means of 'understanding.'
4. Failed interpellation by the policeman: Apparently in violation of an anti-loitering ordinance, or some law intended to maintain "public order, public decency," Molloy attracts the attention of a policeman who asks him for his papers. Molloy responds by thrusting bits of newspaper that he carries with him to "wipe [him]self...when [he has] a stool" (19) under the policeman's nose. Instead of presenting documents that would establish his official identity, Molloy, who at this point in the text is still nameless, provides the representative of the Law a text that is literally meaningless waste, i.e., old shit-smeared papers.
In a sense, however, Molloy's gesture speaks a sort of truth. He is, from the perspective of mainstream society, nothing but shit or waste.
5. Impermeability of the TLS: Like many homeless people, Molloy uses old newspaper as insulation to keep himself warm in the winter months. He notes that the Times Literary Supplement was "admirably adapted to this purpose, of a never failing toughness and impermeability," even to his farts (30). Here, as McLuhan put it, the medium is the message, meanging what...? Beckett's choice of this particular intertext must be intentional. He is thumbing his nose at the British literary establishment. But this scene is more than a literary joke. It's important to note how use trumps meaning in Molloy's relationship to the TLS. Dare we describe Molloy as a pragmatist?
6. Icy words: Reflecting on how he "had been living so far from words so long," Molloy recalls how, at the time, he had been unable to recall the name of his town and his own name. This period appears to have been near the beginning of Molloy's deteriorating relationship with language: "even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names" (31). (This "waves and particles" remark intrigues me. I want to connect it to the cosmological 'perspectivism' that is a principle of modern physics). But Molloy suggests that his ability to remember the past has been compromised"...what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies took, foully named" (31). For Molloy, language has become akin to a meaningless force of nature that batters his body and threatens to overwhelm him.
7. Lousse's parrot: The bird speaks expressions that, obviously, it doesn't comprehend (38). The parrot doesn't intend to say anything meaningful, it simply repeats sounds. (Not unlike a student who aspires only to parrot correct answers.) Nonetheless, Molloy claims he understands the bird better than Lousse. In what sense might this absurd claim be true?
8. Writing as decomposition/blackening pages (74): …
Anyone with further additions, please post 'em!
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Tuesday Morning Joke
Q: What is George W. Bush's position on Roe v. Wade?
A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.
Courtesy of my sister, the Political Science professor.
A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.
Courtesy of my sister, the Political Science professor.
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