How to Master the Culture Wars in Two Weeks
Presenting “How to Master X in Two Weeks,” a shortcut to projecting erudition and insight into the most pressing political issues of the day. In this installment we focus on two recent publications from Harvard University Press – Age of Fracture by Daniel T. Rodgers and Unmaking the Public University by Christopher Newfield.
Combined and Uneven Apocalypse – Evan Calder Williams
Just think back to the feared “zombie banks” of the 2008 financial collapse, or to the current firesale of Greek industries, which has coincided with a renewed focus on occupying and repurposing urban territory in Syntagma square (Athens), Tahrir square (Cairo), and the many plazas across Spain occupied recently by the indignatos, and you can see how Williams’ theoretical preoccupations are not as peripheral as they may initially seem to be.
I think it better to echo the sentiment voiced by Tom Scharpling on this week’s Best Show on WFMU: “You put [The Office] up against Alan Partridge, it beats that thing up down and every which way….Viva Coogan!”
It was in New York, in an intellectual and cultural ferment consisting of rock music, contemporary German philosophy, LSD, homosexuality, and Abstract Expressionism, that Rose began her Lehrjar – her real apprenticeship.
“I don’t see my work in relation to the university at all; if I’m lucky, I will continue not to see it that way. Some thrive in academia, but I find it brings out the worst of my slothful, autistic, obscurantist tendencies.”
Three Ways to Respond to Your Bully: The Failings of the Modern University
Though strange bedfellows, these books can go some distance in repairing the fractured relationship between the university and society at large.
The levels of depravity and viciousness that W. is able to reach through his assessment of Lars and himself truly merit the exalted categories of cosmic, transcendental, and messianic.
Dispatches from SXSW: Corporate Branding, Social Media, Tasty Food
South by Southwest (SXSW, or more annoyingly, “South by”) has been on for about a week now, but a change is definitely well underway. For one thing, the packs of 20-somethings roving downtown Austin with the kind of unearned self confidence that comes with a festival badge are significantly more attractive as of yesterday (when […]
Walled States, Waning Sovereignty – Wendy Brown
“Wendy Brown chooses to focus on the increasingly familiar phenomenon of erecting physical barriers – both at the edges of sovereign territories and within – in an age of globalization that in its most utopian moments promises to make such barriers obsolete.”