Conference at SOAS this weekend.

Historical Materialism is a high level conference with some fabulous speakers right on our dorrsteps at SOAS this weekend.

Sessions on Adorno-Emancipatory praxis and conceptuality in Adorno: Some notes on the time of insurrection. One on "All that is fluid is frozen to stone: sex, individuality, non-identity"

Vygotsky, Gramsci, Zizek, Althusser, Lucaks, Orientalism, Postcolonialism, New left in Palestine and much more.

It suggests a donation for entrance but you could blag it if you bemoan the fact that we are studying at universties in a neo-liberal world; (correct this time? please, please say yes) fees, kids, having to work etc!!

Call me on 07958 034 181 if you want to meet up.

Link to website and full program: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/

Two sessions to wet (whet?) your whistle eg. Friday 10am:

MARX AND PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY: NORMATIVITY AND ALIENATION
Chair: Martin McIvor
Sean Sayers
Alienation as a critical concept
Gaspar Miklos Tamas
The uniqueness of capitalism and the normative content of a socialist political philosophy
Nicholas Joll
The normativity problem in critical theory: Adorno, Bernstein, Freyenhagen

MARXISMS AND RELIGION
Chair: Peter Thomas
John Roberts
Marx and the "critique of the critique of religion‟ today
Sami Khatib
Capitalism as religion: Re-reading Walter Benjamin‟s Marxism
Alberto Toscano
The mask of apocalypse, the flag of fanaticism: Marxism, religion and revolt

Anyway, hope to see you there...x

Philosophy disco

Perhaps Sian et al would like to pilot this programme. I for one would be quite up for a being a guinea pig, not liking those pesky words so much. I can just see us errecting (and then perhaps deconstructing) a big Maypole .

Oooh, i feel a bit of a barndance coming on...

Crossposted from Infinite Thought blog. (Links other than the first posted by me-Clare)
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I like Jarvis Cocker's plan to incorporate lectures into his gigs.

Oxbridge lecturers will doubtless be watching these gigs carefully, waiting to see if the lecture-disco format takes off.

Well, I may not be an Oxbridge lecturer, but I could probably do with more music in my classes. When teaching Adorno I once played some selections from Swing Tanzen Verboten!, a collection of Nazi swing music from WWII. Fearing the mystical transformative properties of the tunes, one of my students asked me if he could hold me personally responsible if he became a fascist. But of course, dear boy.

Of late I have been trying to think which areas of philosophy I really, definitely don't want to teach, so that when asked I can resolutely say 'no, not my area!'. So far I have determined two: logic/calculus and ethics. I really, really hate teaching ethics. Kant's categorical imperative, fine, but talking about ickle bitty foetuses with undergraduates - horrible. If ethics means anything it's only as a branch of politics. A very tiny branch, too fragile to hold even the smallest of birds. Perhaps, in retrospect, I wasn't the best person to be appointed to the Ethics committee...but who else was going to approve the participant observation burlesque project!

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In addition: Adorno about Popular Music (now with english annotation)

Persephone's Flight in 2 minutes

Thx Marco for your You Tube tip.



I don't like words anyway...

a subversive reading??

It might not be one of her best written books, but Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad makes an interesting read against The Odyssey. It retells The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope and the twelve maids in an attempt to reclaim a bit of personality for poor ol' Penelope, who gets a bit of a raw deal in Homer's version! It's quite funny but if you ask me I might not say it's as cutting as it perhaps intends to be. It doesn't really create a new perspective but merely defends Penelope and the maids of Homer by giving them a bit more depth and a good dose of synicism. All the good ones (Helen, Eurycleia, Telemachus etc.) are irritating and unrealistic and the Gods aren't all they're cracked up to be, is the general take. Taster below to see if you're interested. It's an easy read and won't take very long to get through but it gave me a bit to think about:

"He was always so plausible. Many people have believed that his version of events was the true one, give or take a few murders, a few beautiful seductresses, a few one-eyed monsters. Even I believed him, from time to time. I knew he was tricky and a liar. I just didn't think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me. Hadn't I been faithful? ... And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with.

...

"Day after day I would climb up to the top floor of the palace and look out over the harbour. Day after day there was no sign. Sometimes there were ships, but never the ship I longed to see.

Rumours came, carried by other ships. Odysseus and his men had got drunk at their first port of call and the men had mutinied, said some; no, said others, they'd eaten a magic plant that had caused them to lose their memories, and Odysseus had saved them by having them tied up and carried onto the ships. Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill. Some of the men had been eaten by cannibals, said some; no, it was just a brawl of the usual kind, said others, with ear-bitings and nosebleeds and stabbings and eviscerations. Odysseus was the guest of a goddess on an enchanted isle, said some; she'd turned his men into pigs - not a hard job in my view - but had turned them back into men because she'd fallen in love with him and was feeding him unheard-of delicacies prepared by her own immortal hands, and the two of them made love deliriously every night; no, said others, it was just an expensive whorehouse, and he was sponging off the Madam"

Maama Blair and She One Pickney

Maama Blair and She One Pickney!

Or

A Tale of Authority

Ay buoy guess wa appen, me hear se dis maanin over Maasa Pickens lan se sombudy grab up Maama Blair daata!

Mek a tell wa appen it seem like Maama went fe look fe she one pickney and keyaan see she nowhere, Maama search all over de fe she, she waak an look from one side a de land to de udder askin every baady if dem see er.

Well it look like some lil bouy dem was tendin sum goat and dem tell Maama Blair se dem see Maasa Pickens’ overseer grab de gaal wile she was washing dem clothes and tek er pan is haas an dem gaan in de grung.

Well wen Maama Blair heer dis maan she gaan mad, she halla and baal till dem could hear she till a BackDam. Maama tek she bed an nah move from deh an nah mek no healin fa nobaady. Wen dem caal she fi cum she na movin fi nobaady.

Well dis carry on fah me na know how lang but lang lang time, dem seh she lay dung feh a lang lang time an she kass-kass. Dem people workin ah de plantation sick, dem come dung wid dis an dat an cut demself bad. But maan she nah get up but stay ah she bed an cry an wail.

So nex, ting me ere say she start fe get up an look pan sum a de sick people, she keyaan stop carin fah dem udder people pickney yuh see.

But ebry minute she get she look fuh she only daata Cicely. Waakin all aroun’ an about weh de maasa people let she, till she gan an aks Maasa Pickens fe she daata an tell im all dat she hear from de lil bouy dem. Maasa nah k wah appen but im seh im will aks de overseer an see wha im seh.

Well im cum bak tell maama dat de overseer keyaan give up Cicely cause im does get one pound for every child im faader pan de gaal.

Maama wail and baal and say she nah guh do nutt’n anymore, seh she nah go help or tek care a dem people who hut demself an dem one who keyaan walk an bleedin an bruck up. .

An so yuh know maasa know im have fe get in de cane an need im slaves fuh do it, de white dackta won’t look pan we maama is de one who look pan dem, mek dem feel good yuh see.
Maasa tell Maama Blair if Cicely av pickney she av fe stay wid de overseer, she ave fe care fe she pickney.

Anyhow maama went fe get she daata, eh eh nex ting one a dem ouse bouys tell Maasa Pickens Cicely gat six pickney !

Maan mek a tel yuh Maasa tun pan Maama and tell she Cicely a fe stay wid de overseer fuh six mont a de year fe raise she pickney dem an den she keyaan cum back to she maama fe de res a de time.

Well yuh know all ting cum roun an Maama does fix up people now, and look after dem but wen dark time does cum she stay inna she ouse an nah see nobaady an nah do nutt'in.

But buoy de las ting me guh tell yuh? Cicely is Maasa Pickens daata!

MA Tutorial Group Activity – Positive Group

Firstly, apologies to Holly for the late response to her post, this will be the first time that I have used a blog and (being the technophobe that I am) I have had to gear myself up to do it.

In the tutorial I was paired with Jonathon and we were set the task of critiquing the scholarship of Holly and Jenny in a positive way. Without reiterating what Holly has said, the exercise was an example of the ways in which myth is constructed as a category. Here is what Jonathon and I came up with…

“The scholarship of Holly and Jenny is one of cutting edge genius. Their academia addresses the reassessment of contemporary issues spanning the globe, from the UK to South Asia. Their field of study allows for the de-construction of the errors of the past, creating a new, self-reflexive, insight that is vital for understanding the controversies of modern life today. Their work is breaking boundaries, with a particular focus towards championing feminism. Studying at SOAS encourages these two mavericks to flourish within a pioneering academic institution.”

Next Week

The tutorial question for next week:

What is particularly ‘romantic’ about the concept of the ‘folk’ and what is dangerous about connecting the folk to conceptions of national identity? What role does myth play in this formulation?

Moreover, think about the keywords that Sian mentioned during the last lecture: 'authentic' (you might want to jump a little to existentialism/Heidegger/Nazism?), 'pure', 'original'.

Whatever new ideas you might have about these are welcome so feel free to use this page to comment.

Have a nice weekend

Music

Dear all,

Following Bidi's request, I fixed a way to embed music on the blog. Below, you will find an example of how it works (please comment below if you cannot hear the music or see the player. If you don't it's most probably that you need to install the Quicktime plugin for your browser). I picked something short and uncopyrighted for starters. Anyway, since we all only buy legal music on iTunes™ and the blog is private to us, I'm sure there will be no major problems with that.
Keep this option in mind when writing your story, in case you want to add music.
Unless you know how to host an .mp3 (or .m4a if coming from iTunes™) file on a hosting website (ad ex. here), you will have to send the music file to me™, and I'll put it on.

Thanks to all the BA students for the interesting conversations of today (and I'm sure you MA students did great too...).

I'll soon send a collective email to make it clearer who is in which timeslot for the tutorials. Please respect them next week, so we can have a good number of people in both.

Subversive tale telling

Click on the image to read the story...

Horkheimer and Adorno

Now that you have all read Horkheimer and Adorno you may like to take a look at this extract from an article that unpacks it a little. But is this all we can say about their relationship to myth in 'dialectic of Enlightenment'? What does the context of the time they were writing add to our understanding of their critique of myth of Enlightenment?

J. Schmidt, ‘Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Social Research, 1998 (winter)

MA tutorial group activity - negative group

The MA's were divided into two groups this week to play around with the idea of self representation in language and how 'myths' can be created using similar language but for very different purposes. Perhaps an illustration of the ways in which meaning is created through interpretation both by 'creator' and reader:

The religionists in the MA course have a very narrow specialisation (with a focus particularly on dead-languages) for the purposes of examinining diverse and heterogeneous phenomenons which become universalised and totalised under their 'objective' gaze. The discipline of which they are a part is closed and does not engage with discourses going on outside of their specialisation, preventing the authority of their discipline from coming under scrutiny.

I hope that the other group blogs theirs up soon, as otherwise this looks like some random abuse of all you SoR bods ;-p

Extra readings for Critical Theory/Myth & Mythmaking

Click here for link to the list. I will update this list regularly as and when I remember or find more titles. Please add any more that you come across.

Nb. The Bookshop that i have recommened, Bookmarks, the Socialist Bookshop, is a small independent bookshop fighting it's way against the big, bad, meany multi-nationals; (correct use of a semi-colon?!) most of which have decreased stocks of academic books, especially the not-so-mainstream variety due to the fact that they're not 'bestsellers'.

The lovely, knowledgable workers will help you find what you are looking for, and perhaps suggest titles that you didn't know you are looking for. They can order ANY book, even capitalist stuff if you like...

If you set up an account and direct debit of £10 per month you get 10% off. It's great coz when you go in to get books it feels like you're getting free books! They also do many events; book launches with great speakers, filmshowings, parties and the such like. Enjoy.

In solidarity, Clare

Next Week

The tutorial question for next week is:

What is the ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’ and what are its main characteristics? What ‘myth of Enlightenment’ are Adorno and Horkheimer challenging in this article? What and whose purpose might that myth serve? What might be at stake in maintaining it as the foundation of western rationality? Whose myth is it?

Keep in mind some things:

1) The article refers heavily to the Odyssey, which by now you should know like the back of your hand.
2) Read it critically: by now you should have enough theoretical background on myth, progress and interests in myth formation (courtesy of Sian's lectures) to spot the subtext and the expectations that underlie the paper.
3) Keep in mind who the guys who wrote that paper are (Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer) hence what they might be aiming at.

Above you see two pics of the two in question: Horkheimer above and Adorno below (what is it with bald philosophers?)