Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
(AE, AP-Honors, NHN) Fall, 2009 Student Blogging Ends Today, Papers and Reviews Due Tomorrow
Reminders:
1. No posts dated after midnight tonight will count toward the minimum required for satisfying the blogging component of my fall, 2009 seminars. All posts throughout the semester must be dated and time-stamped.
2. Final, hard-copy versions of multistage, persuasive essays are due tomorrow in class.
3. Book reviews (in hard copy, along with their oral presentations) are due tomorrow in class.
I will accept no late papers, reviews, posts, etc. for any credit whatsoever unless accompanied by an official, written explanation as outlined in the official MCLA Student Handbook.
1. No posts dated after midnight tonight will count toward the minimum required for satisfying the blogging component of my fall, 2009 seminars. All posts throughout the semester must be dated and time-stamped.
2. Final, hard-copy versions of multistage, persuasive essays are due tomorrow in class.
3. Book reviews (in hard copy, along with their oral presentations) are due tomorrow in class.
I will accept no late papers, reviews, posts, etc. for any credit whatsoever unless accompanied by an official, written explanation as outlined in the official MCLA Student Handbook.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Obama = Bush-without-the-smirk?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/09-8
Update:
Obama takes the (peace) prize. From his acceptance speech in Oslo (I paraphrase very liberally): War (read: US occupations around the world) is peace: Take that, you naive, lily-livered, unpatriotic, tree-hugging, peace-loving, vegan, "pacifists!"
Update:
Obama takes the (peace) prize. From his acceptance speech in Oslo (I paraphrase very liberally): War (read: US occupations around the world) is peace: Take that, you naive, lily-livered, unpatriotic, tree-hugging, peace-loving, vegan, "pacifists!"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/10-1
Norman Solomon comments (nice remarks):
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/10-3
Glen Greenwald comments (even better):
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/11-9
This 24 year-old student (and veteran of Iraq) understands that most so-called "just wars" are just wars:
Monday, December 07, 2009
(AP) Piper on Fetishism
Adrian Piper claims that we errantly fetishize art objects if we see them as unique, their spatio-temporal locations and histories not amounting to a full-fledged "identity, and their putative power to influence us a mere reflection of our own displaced capacities. Human beings, that is, are alone inherently creative, "alive," and non-reproducible.
Her complaint with fetishism is Marxist in spirit (as he applies the concept to commodities and economic "laws"). But the impulse to fetishize in aesthetics (as in human sexuality and religion), while clearly an epistemological and metaphysical error (the object of our fetish does not in fact possess the properties we ascribe to it), is relatively harmless. We oftentimes willingly submit to exaggerated or false accounts of the nature of art objects in order fully to appreciate their aesthetic dimension. (We "lose" ourselves in a novel, for example, tacitly attributing to its characters and setting more reality and power than they possess.)
It may be that Piper would not count these as legitimate examples of fetishism in art (because we are at least partly aware of our impulse to fetishize). At any rate, the very idea of fetishism seems to lose much of its force when transferred from the life-and-death realm of political economy to the highly subjective world of art.
Her complaint with fetishism is Marxist in spirit (as he applies the concept to commodities and economic "laws"). But the impulse to fetishize in aesthetics (as in human sexuality and religion), while clearly an epistemological and metaphysical error (the object of our fetish does not in fact possess the properties we ascribe to it), is relatively harmless. We oftentimes willingly submit to exaggerated or false accounts of the nature of art objects in order fully to appreciate their aesthetic dimension. (We "lose" ourselves in a novel, for example, tacitly attributing to its characters and setting more reality and power than they possess.)
It may be that Piper would not count these as legitimate examples of fetishism in art (because we are at least partly aware of our impulse to fetishize). At any rate, the very idea of fetishism seems to lose much of its force when transferred from the life-and-death realm of political economy to the highly subjective world of art.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Thursday, December 03, 2009
(AE & AP) Wartenberg on Danto on Weitz
Tom Wartenberg suggested yesterday that Danto’s consideration of Warhol’s Brillo Box offers a solution to Morris Weitz’s skepticism about the very idea of defining art. I remain skeptical.
Weitz’s claim is that, given its expansive, creative, or “open” nature (like games for Wittgenstein), no traditional definition of art (in terms of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions) is possible. Danto invokes Warhol’s Brillo Box and its near-identical supermarket counterparts to argue that those persons who have achieved a sufficient understanding of the history and theory of (some domain of) art are thereby entitled to employ the “is of artistic identification,” an act that imposes a conceptual distinction on two perceptually indistinguishable objects. Art is, therefore, in the eye of the informed observer. Nowhere in this analysis does Danto offer a definition of art capable of countering Weitz’s skepticism.
Weitz’s claim is that, given its expansive, creative, or “open” nature (like games for Wittgenstein), no traditional definition of art (in terms of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions) is possible. Danto invokes Warhol’s Brillo Box and its near-identical supermarket counterparts to argue that those persons who have achieved a sufficient understanding of the history and theory of (some domain of) art are thereby entitled to employ the “is of artistic identification,” an act that imposes a conceptual distinction on two perceptually indistinguishable objects. Art is, therefore, in the eye of the informed observer. Nowhere in this analysis does Danto offer a definition of art capable of countering Weitz’s skepticism.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Real Men Don't Sacrifice the Lives of Others to Win Elections
Rob Herbert, NYTimes:
"The word is that Mr. Obama will tell the public Tuesday that he is sending another 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. And while it is reported that he has some strategy in mind for eventually turning the fight over to the ragtag and less-than-energetic Afghan military, it’s clear that U.S. forces will be engaged for years to come, perhaps many years.
The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.
Lyndon Johnson is heard on the tapes telling Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about a comment made by a Texas rancher in the days leading up to the buildup in Vietnam. The rancher had told Johnson that the public would forgive the president “for everything except being weak.”
Russell said: “Well, there’s a lot in that. There’s a whole lot in that.”
We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war."
Update:
It's done (unless Congress has the good sense -- don't count on it! -- to withhold funding for Obama's War). Tom Engelhardt comments:
"Unfortunately, the most essential problem isn’t in Afghanistan; it’s here in the United States, in Washington, where knowledge is slim, egos large, and national security wisdom is deeply imprinted on a system bleeding money and breaking down. The president campaigned on the slogan, “Change we can believe in.” He then chose as advisors -- in the economic sphere as well, where a similar record of gross error, narrow and unimaginative thinking, and over-identification with the powerful could easily be compiled -- a crew who had never seen a significant change, or an out-of-the-ordinary thought it could live with -- and still can’t.
As a result, the Iraq War has yet to begin to go away, the Afghan War is being escalated in a major way, the Middle East is in some turmoil, Guantanamo remains open, black sites are still operating in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s budget has grown yet larger, and supplemental demands on Congress for yet more money to pay for George W. Bush’s wars will, despite promises otherwise, soon enough be made.
A stale crew breathing stale air has ensured that Afghanistan, the first of Bush’s disastrous wars, is now truly Obama’s War; and the news came directly from West Point where the president surrendered to his militarized fate."
Update 2:
From CODEPINK:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/05-2
"The word is that Mr. Obama will tell the public Tuesday that he is sending another 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. And while it is reported that he has some strategy in mind for eventually turning the fight over to the ragtag and less-than-energetic Afghan military, it’s clear that U.S. forces will be engaged for years to come, perhaps many years.
The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.
Lyndon Johnson is heard on the tapes telling Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, about a comment made by a Texas rancher in the days leading up to the buildup in Vietnam. The rancher had told Johnson that the public would forgive the president “for everything except being weak.”
Russell said: “Well, there’s a lot in that. There’s a whole lot in that.”
We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war."
Update:
It's done (unless Congress has the good sense -- don't count on it! -- to withhold funding for Obama's War). Tom Engelhardt comments:
"Unfortunately, the most essential problem isn’t in Afghanistan; it’s here in the United States, in Washington, where knowledge is slim, egos large, and national security wisdom is deeply imprinted on a system bleeding money and breaking down. The president campaigned on the slogan, “Change we can believe in.” He then chose as advisors -- in the economic sphere as well, where a similar record of gross error, narrow and unimaginative thinking, and over-identification with the powerful could easily be compiled -- a crew who had never seen a significant change, or an out-of-the-ordinary thought it could live with -- and still can’t.
As a result, the Iraq War has yet to begin to go away, the Afghan War is being escalated in a major way, the Middle East is in some turmoil, Guantanamo remains open, black sites are still operating in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s budget has grown yet larger, and supplemental demands on Congress for yet more money to pay for George W. Bush’s wars will, despite promises otherwise, soon enough be made.
A stale crew breathing stale air has ensured that Afghanistan, the first of Bush’s disastrous wars, is now truly Obama’s War; and the news came directly from West Point where the president surrendered to his militarized fate."
Update 2:
From CODEPINK:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/05-2
To the (Gold-plated) Barricades!
Wall Street bankers seeking guns for protection against angry proletariat (not a joke):
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ahD2WoDAL9h0
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ahD2WoDAL9h0
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