Wanna make a bet?
May. 11th, 2005 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twilight33"But in seeking to cut the ground from under its opponents' feet, postmodernism finds itself unavoidably pulling the rug out from under itself, leaving itself with no more reason why we should resist fascism than the feebly pragmatic plea that fascism is not the way we do things in Sussex or Sacramento." (pg.28)
Eagleton, Terry 1996. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
In the midst of trying to comprehend extreme Oxford drunken (according to my prof) professorese in this book, this quote caught me off guard & cracked me up. He clearly has never seen the insurance lobbying agency & their tactics in the State legislature in my fair hometown.
I know I said I'd write about the other book I finished for class, here's a stab at it but it's so wide-ranging that I'm still leaving a lot out. It's Race in North America - Origin and Evolution of a Worldview by Audrey Smedley. It explores the roots of the cultural myth of race as a system to establish inequality (England's view of 11th century Irish is an early precursor), through the entrenching of it in American slavery through the 19th century (although there were more Irish than African slaves initially), the unscientific methodologies used by science to justify racial categories (Louis Agassiz was a right bastard in this regard), how a 2nd century Roman guy's writing (Tacitus) led a late 17th century French guy (Boulainvilliers) to essentially create a biological myth called Anglo-Saxonism (whose ardent followers included Thomas Jefferson & Hitler), and how all this crap is still perpetuating itself today both openly and underneath PC veneers of 'cultural diversity'.
This book and one from a previous class (Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith) sum up my views in anthropology which aren't exactly mainstream. We had a discussion in class last night about the bureaucracy and how to play with situations to make them a cost benefit to the Dean & further improve the impression of the anthropology department because they're not after undergrads... they want more graduate students, prestige & grants. The prof & I gave each other a knowing nod & wink because now we've both spun the educational bureaucracy game in our favor. I am really going to miss being on both the employee & student side of the game after I graduate, but even though graduate studies won't work out for me right now I have a feeling I'll be back.
Eagleton, Terry 1996. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
In the midst of trying to comprehend extreme Oxford drunken (according to my prof) professorese in this book, this quote caught me off guard & cracked me up. He clearly has never seen the insurance lobbying agency & their tactics in the State legislature in my fair hometown.
I know I said I'd write about the other book I finished for class, here's a stab at it but it's so wide-ranging that I'm still leaving a lot out. It's Race in North America - Origin and Evolution of a Worldview by Audrey Smedley. It explores the roots of the cultural myth of race as a system to establish inequality (England's view of 11th century Irish is an early precursor), through the entrenching of it in American slavery through the 19th century (although there were more Irish than African slaves initially), the unscientific methodologies used by science to justify racial categories (Louis Agassiz was a right bastard in this regard), how a 2nd century Roman guy's writing (Tacitus) led a late 17th century French guy (Boulainvilliers) to essentially create a biological myth called Anglo-Saxonism (whose ardent followers included Thomas Jefferson & Hitler), and how all this crap is still perpetuating itself today both openly and underneath PC veneers of 'cultural diversity'.
This book and one from a previous class (Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith) sum up my views in anthropology which aren't exactly mainstream. We had a discussion in class last night about the bureaucracy and how to play with situations to make them a cost benefit to the Dean & further improve the impression of the anthropology department because they're not after undergrads... they want more graduate students, prestige & grants. The prof & I gave each other a knowing nod & wink because now we've both spun the educational bureaucracy game in our favor. I am really going to miss being on both the employee & student side of the game after I graduate, but even though graduate studies won't work out for me right now I have a feeling I'll be back.
