From The Immanent Frame…

Simon During is a professor at the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland, having previously taught at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Melbourne, and elsewhere. In addition to editing The Cultural Studies Reader, now in its third edition, he is the author of several books, including Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Harvard, 2002) and Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory and Post-Secular Modernity (Routledge, 2010). In both, he brings questions of the secular to bear on historical, literary sources both obscure and revelatory. His Compulsory Democracy: towards a literary history is forthcoming. More…

From the Guardian…

Nikesh Shukla is a writer, performance poet and filmmaker. His writing has appeared on radio and television and his film The Great Identity Swindle, co-directed with Videowallah, won best short film at the Satyajit Ray Foundation awards in 2009. He lives in north London. His first novel, Coconut Unlimited, is shortlisted for this year’s Costa first novel award.

“If we’ve been told anything ever in our lives ever, it’s that Anglo-Asian books will cross swords with themes of cultural identity and dual heritage, repressed marriages and there will be at least one mystical encounter in a mangrove swamp. Probably with mist. Anglo-Asian books are more than these stereotypes.

“Writing my own debut meant doing the entire opposite of all those things, throwing them out and doing a Hornby, or a Coe, filling the soundtrack with Public Enemy and steeping the drama in suburban nausea. These books deal with the diversity of Anglo-Asian themes and take us to communes, squats, concerts, Mumbai, even Tunbridge Wells. Not a banyan tree in sight. And it’s not just the brown boys and girls getting involved. Multiculturalism is so embedded in our culture that writers like William Sutcliffe are considering themes of racism and spiritualism. Anglo-Asian books are beyond being about Asians in England. They’re about the marrying of cultures, about understanding of the world we live in and its changing boundaries. More…

From Rebecca Attwood at Times Higher Education…

Nigel Tubbs, professor of philosophical and educational thought at the University of Winchester, has encountered a few false impressions when promoting his university’s new degree in modern liberal arts.

One prospective student, confusing liberal arts with creative arts, thought that taking a liberal arts degree must mean that “you dance a lot”.

So, on open days and when visiting sixth forms, Tubbs tries to raise interest in the degree, which imparts general knowledge and develops intellectual skills rather than specialising in one subject. Good tactics, he has found, are asking prospective students if they have found that their own world view doesn’t fit neatly into any of the subjects they are studying; and asserting that degrees that focus on just one subject are “the new kids on the block”.

“We were here in 400BC,” he tells them.

Many of the students’ parents have told Tubbs they wish that they had had the chance to take such a wide-ranging programme, which spans disciplines from art and music to politics, mathematics and cosmology. More…

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The most recent issue of The International Journal of the Humanities includes:

• Humanizing TESOL Curriculum for Diverse Adult ESL Learners in the Age of Globalization by Majid Al-Amri.
• Antifungal Activity of the Edible Ferns: Application for Public Health by Zuraini Zakaria, Sangetha Sanduran and Sasidharan Sreenivasan.
• Relationships between Sense of Community and Perceived Learning by Mervyn Wighting, Deanna Nisbet and Lucinda Spaulding.
• Internal Anxieties and Conflicts in T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” by Roohollah Reesi Sistani and Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya.
• EFL Teachers’ Beliefs about Grammar and Grammar Teaching: A Case Study of a Language Institute at a Thai University by Kittitouch Soontornwipast.
• Can Estrella Speak? The Voice of the Subaltern by Adam Long.
• Implanting Ethiopia: Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly by Katayoun Toossi.
• Decisions in Art Making: An Illustration through Dance by Liz Maxwell.
• Teaching the Humanities by Michael Mendelson.
• Human Resources Problems in the Turkish Media Management and Solution Model Developed in Terms of New Management Approaches by Güzin K?y?k and Emine Özlem Ataman.

Volume 8, Number 8 contains:

• Mantra and Metaphor in Nepali & Indian Himalayan Communities by Krista Rodin.
• “Earnest-ness” in the 21st Century: The Graphic Diary, Tattoo, and Lie in Oliver Parker’s 2002 Film by Amy W.S. Lee.
• A Content Analysis of Buddhist Discourse: Convergent Perception of Multinational Buddhist Leaders by Kunlaphak Kongsuwannakul.
• Skepticism toward Health Claims in Food Labeling: A Turkish Case by Mine Oyman, Omer Kutlu and Hakan Yilmaz.
• Informal Citizens: Refugee Claimants’ Proactive Existence in Montreal by Lalai Manjikian.
• What is a Classic According to T.S. Eliot and H.-G. Gadamer? by Tansu Acik.
• First-Year Writing: A Student-Centered Paradigm by Glenda Pritchett.
• Neoliberalism and the Disposability of Youth Culture by John Kerr.
• Teachers’ Efficacy Perceptions About Individualized Instruction by Ruhan Karadag.
• Reconciling Epistemic Duty with Non-voluntary Belief by Jill Rusin.

• Humanizing TESOL Curriculum for Diverse Adult ESL Learners in the Age of Globalization by Majid Al-Amri.
• Antifungal Activity of the Edible Ferns: Application for Public Health by Zuraini Zakaria, Sangetha Sanduran and Sasidharan Sreenivasan.
• Relationships between Sense of Community and Perceived Learning by Mervyn Wighting, Deanna Nisbet and Lucinda Spaulding.
• Internal Anxieties and Conflicts in T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” by Roohollah Reesi Sistani and Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya.
• EFL Teachers’ Beliefs about Grammar and Grammar Teaching: A Case Study of a Language Institute at a Thai University by Kittitouch Soontornwipast.
• Can Estrella Speak? The Voice of the Subaltern by Adam Long.
• Implanting Ethiopia: Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly by Katayoun Toossi.
• Decisions in Art Making: An Illustration through Dance by Liz Maxwell.
• Teaching the Humanities by Michael Mendelson.
• Human Resources Problems in the Turkish Media Management and Solution Model Developed in Terms of New Management Approaches by Güzin K?y?k and Emine Özlem Ataman.

From Bnet and the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society…

Richard Porty was born 4 October 1931 in New York City, of left-wing parents. He earned a B.A. degree from the University of Chicago in 1949 and a Ph.D. from the same institution in 1956. At that university, he was strongly influenced by the logical positivism of Rudolf Carnap, an influence he did not repudiate until his famous “turn” against the idea of “scientific philosophy” in 1972 (of which more below).

He was an instructor at Yale (1956-57), and served in the U.S. Army in 1957-58. He returned to take up an instructorship at Wellesley College (1958-61). In 1961 he left Wellesley College for Princeton University, where he was successively assistant, associate, and full professor (1961-82), and was appointed the Stuart Professor of Philosophy in 1981. From 1982 to 1998 he was university professor of the humanities at the University of Virginia, becoming professor emeritus in 1998.

After his retirement from the University of Virginia in 1998, Rorty became professor of comparative literature at Stanford University, retiring again to become professor emeritus at that institution in 2005. More…

From signandsight…

Author Stephan Wackwitz dissevers literature from science, holiness from genius in the legend of Walter Benjamin

In 1972 I was twenty, a supposedly not entirely untalented, deeply impressionable and utterly confused individual. One week it was Maoism, the next it was poetry or fine art. The interminable vacillations of a young man. Ersatz military service in Bad Urach, holidays in Paris, a patchwork university degree in Munich. The obligatory hitch-hiking in Italy. The effects of Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” and three cans of beer in a youth hostel in Milan. An old man holds his head in despair over the diaries of his younger self.

One day, on a marble table top in an Ulm cafe, next to a cup of coffee, lay a red and white Bibliothek Suhrkamp book. It was Walter Benjamin’s “Einbahnstraße” (One Way Street). The effect it was to have on me in the months and years to come echoed that experienced by it author in the 1920′s, who could only read Aragon’s “Paysan de Paris” one page at a time because it made his heart race and kept him awake for nights on end. More…

By Mike Labossiere at talking philosophy…

Wikileaks has made the news once again for leaking confidential documents. This latest batch consists of  251,287 cables from Unites States embassies. While most of the documents are not classified, some are and this is a matter of concern to American officials.

While there are various legal concerns regarding these documents, my main concern is with the ethics of this leaking. I will consider various arguments in the course of the discussion.

One argument in favor of the leak is the classic Gadfly Argument (named in honor of Socrates because of his claim to the role of the gadfly to the city of Athens). The gist of the argument is that the people in government need to be watched and criticized so as to decrease the likelihood that they will conduct and conceal misdeeds in shadows and silence.

Given that governments have an extensive track record of misdeeds, it certainly makes sense to be concerned about what the folks running the show might really be doing under the cloak of secrecy and national security. If it is assumed that being part of the government does not exempt these people from moral accountability, then it would seem to follow that leaking their misdeeds is, in general, a morally acceptable action. After all, it would seem to be rather absurd to argue that people have a moral right to keep their misdeeds a secret. More…

From Cairo 360 Salma Tantawi:

These days, the average reader has limited access to profiles of iconic philosophers that inspired the world; it either involves a lot of Wikipedia searching and digging through old and rare archives, or reading huge books with a lot of complicated words.Therefore, when a normal-sized book promises to present you with a simplified introduction to everything that you need to know about, from Nietzsche to belly-dancing, you have no choice but to seize the opportunity. Trial by Ink is a collection of 21 literary and cultural essays by Arab-American author Yahia Lababidi that provides the wide-ranging insight that it promises in an exciting, surprisingly entertaining way.

In the introduction of Trial by Ink, Lababidi wrote that he was happy to not have to limit himself to discuss only one subject from the many that inhabit his mind. While it is arguable that a specified, more outlined frame of discussion would have helped the reader more, others might find it appealing to be able to engage with the subject matter and refer the subjects to their philosophical backgrounds.

Read More…

Bruce Robbins, n+1, reviews Commonwealth by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri…

“War, suffering, misery, and exploitation increasingly characterize our globalizing world”: these, the first words of Commonwealth, are not eye-catching. Say you are bothered by things like impending ecological catastrophe or massive economic inequality at the global scale. You will have probably plowed through dozens, maybe hundreds of similar lists. If so, you will have learned to notice when writers stop thinking but keep on listing. And you will have therefore observed, in the sentence above, that “suffering” is pretty nearly the same thing as “misery.” Lexicologists might quibble, but the phrase would still get a cautionary repetitious? in any freshman writing class.

There’s no way around it: Commonwealth is an irritating book. It shoves injustice in your face and then, having gotten your attention, refuses to hold still and look at the war or suffering or whatever, but instead soars so high into an atmosphere of self-generated abstraction that very soon you can no longer recognize any earthly landmarks at all. More…