Sort options:
newest first |
oldest first |
group by author
Recent tags:
context
business
global
global-business-context
review
marketing
international
global-business
global-business-contex...
book
advertising
global-business-context.
spin
pr
history
corporate
simon-keen
theory
media
games
Ware2, guv?
Wonderful, witty, biting and barbed, but also with a streak of compassion beneath it all, despite the suspicion that Self tried to stamp out the pathos and leave only a bleak misanthropy. Although there is all the savagery of the attack on human inanity and cruelty that invites comparisons with Swift, there isn't quite the contempt for pernicious little vermin that Swift relentlessly exhibits. The comparison with Swift is useful though, since here we see the familiar aspects of our lives and traditions blown into Brobdignagian proportions, while the talking animals, forever child-like, are butchered for their meat - disconcertingly conflating the Houhyhnhms with a modest proposal.
Self's satire is as grotesque as Swift and Rabelais, and the effectiveness of his satire lies not just in the way the far-fetched alienness suddenly invokes the absurdity of our world, deadened as we are to its familiarity, but also from the rigour with which he pursues his conceits. The fabric of the city transformed into a new Jerusalem, the absurd mythologies replaced not with sense but with further senseless mythology, the sheer irration of religion and culture - the terrible logic of each conceit is followed doggedly and anarchically. Self doesn't so much prick the surface of pomp and self-regard, as much as languidly climb inside and dismantle them, line by lugubrious line, or pulverise them like a giant Gulliver at last standing up straight in a holy Lilliputian church.
And the ultimate hero is the language itself: tracts of mercurial liquidity mesh ceaselessly with neologisms, whose each use grafts new layers of meaning and implication, til you're left dizzy by the sheer dazzling possibility of each new sentence. There is a joyous heteroglossia to graze on here, to be wallowed in with child-like pleasure until Self sticks the dagger in your throat, and you finally leave to be with Dave.
The world and its existence
Really interesting book with some (key) flaws.
Nelson has a problem with modern philosophy: according to her, it is peopled by loons who think the world doesn't exist, and that attempts to assert that it does are doomed to absurdity. She attributes the rise of postmodernism to this philosophical position, which she argues is directly attributable to Hume's empirical scepticism, and those who have followed.
The book mostly consists of a dialogue between a 'naive realist' student, and a philosophy professor who advances the anti-realist and sceptical positions, and over the course of the dialogue, makes a persuasive case that the world does, indeed, really exist, and that 'abduction' is the way to justify such a belief.
The book, aimed apparently at philosophy students before they are horribly corrupted by the philosophical canon, succeeds in getting across a good explanation of ideas such as representation, infallibility, certainty, and other philosophical and logical problems, though it does rather require some familiarity with those ideas - it's not great for starting philosophy from scratch.
The weaknesses arise because the canonical position is not presented as strongly as someone who actually believes this stuff might have argued it, so in this sense the dialogue doesn't work brilliantly as a refutation, even though it does help to make the debates readable.
I also think the author fails to address the significance of linguistic practices in constructing the world, and certainly often ignores the extent to which meaning shapes the world we are able to consider. To talk about the difference between 'facts' and 'language' is a moot point; so even if the external world really exists, I wonder to what extent it is meaningful to say it 'exists' without an observer and their language to describe it so. Our presence, as linguistically constructed beings, makes us responsible to it. Without language, we are absent, so to what extent can we be responsible to something we are absent from?
'Linguistic communities' are dealt with extremely briefly, though I suppose they are not the main beef of the book. Nevertheless, if you want to dispense with postmodernism, you need to address linguistic communities in some other way.
The book concludes with some interesting and arguable points about the various philosophical schools' relationships to totalitarian thinking: since, if 'reality' is consensual, so the argument goes, such schools can be used to justified tyranny. This, however, is a debate about how to draw the foundations of ethics, rather than the foundations of ontology. So the final (tacit) assertion of capitalism and competition as corresponding to philosophical freedom suits the Ayn Rand school objectivists who are proclaiming this book elsewhere on the web. I think their celebration is premature.
I do, however, enjoy being reassured that actually, the world, does, almost certainly, exist.
Tags: language objectivism philosophy postmodernism realism scepticism social-construction
Mad raving in French
I only just started reading this book, which purports to dissect philosophy from the normally-rejected position of naive realism. And already in the introduction, in which the author acknowledges the place of 'bullshit' in postmodernism, I'm in stitches, not least because of this line:
"Of course, things are always worse in France, where philosophy seems to have gone all but raving mad"
Hear fucking hear
Tags: bullshit philosophy postmodernism
Imbecilic Circle-Jerk
"Morons filming morons for the benefit of morons: it's one big imbecilic circle-jerk."
Tags: humour imbecility tv
Celebrity Fuck Hut
In this book, Charlie Brooker demonstrates his mastery of pretty much all of the letters in the English alphabet, as well as an almost faultless application of the generally accepted standards of punctuation. In doing so, he expertly forms many series of sentences into the larger format we commonly think of as an 'article'.
Fortunately for us, when we read these syntactically correct statements, our eyes are not likely to spontaneously liquify and trickle down our cheeks, leaving exquisitely tender sockets to be filled with acidulated shit. To be honest, we'll probably make it to the end of the book without any physical danger.
Other reviewers may prefer to emphasise Brooker's anger and bile, his caustic and hilarious wit, his sorry lot as our humble servant gawping in his pants at a TV set all day long, and the imbecility he bemoans as it weeps down the channels, hastening the inevitable collapse of society. I prefer to praise his exemplary and judicious use of capital letters.
Not a booktrocity. Read it and weep.
Can the web revolutionise politics?
This book is a very enthusiastic and breathless account of how Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign gained momentum through the web.
Here's a taster:
"...it was the opening salvo in a revolution, the sound of hundreds of thousands of Americans turning off their televsions and embracing the only form of technology that has allowed them to be involved again, to gain control of a process that alienated them decades ago.
"In the coming weeks and months and years, these hundreds of thousands will be followed by millions, and this revolution will not be satisfied with overthrowing a corrupt and unresponsive political system...."
Tags: citizen-participation citizenship internet media-participation politics
Critical Essays on Kafka
This is an old anthology of essays now (1962), but for any Kafka reader, it provides useful and provocative insights into aspects of Kafka's writing and influence.
Particularly interesting are essays on the comparison between K and Hemingway, and acknowledgement of Kierkegaard's influence on K's religious philosophy, and the perennial use of the subjunctive tense in K's writing.
The subjunctive tense is lost in English, since the translators choose to avoid the constant annoyance of each sentence being formed as 'He would go... the street would lead... K would think...'
The thread of subjunctive tense that runs throughout K's work reflects the uncertainty felt by the protagonist of "On the tram":
"I stand on the end of the platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family."
Tags: czech fiction kafka literature modernism subjunctive translation
Sexuality in space
An interesting chapter which begs the question as to whether trekkie sci-fi fans are more politically progressive when it comes to the protrayal of diverse sexualities, than the makers of Star Trek, or even the rest of the population at large.
Unsynopsis
I had planned to go through Merleau-Ponty's preface to this book, line by line, and as I did so, make detailed notes, in order that I could record an understanding of the text.
It soon became clear however, that these detailed notes, in order to fully express that understanding, would necessarily be word-for-word identical to the original.
And as Borges' Pierre Menard's new Quixote would have been a much more rich text than the identical original, so my new verbatim text itself would have been a much more profound exposition of the usefulness of phenomenological approaches to understanding the world.
However, I realised I could not post my synopsis here, because although my text would have been a thoroughly original reproduction of the text, it would nevertheless have infringed Merleau-Ponty's copyright - and therefore, I have desisted in my plan to do so.
Tags: author authorship originality phenomenology postmodernism reflexivity
Original
This chapter doesn't actually exist
Tags: author authorship literature originality postmodernism reflexivity