Antiquitopia

Ferdinand de Saussure, whose Course in General Linguistics (really a book that is a conflation of his students' notes of his lecture) spawned the movement we call "structuralism" (and, therefore, also "post-structuralism") that has been so influential in linguistics, anthropology, mythology, etc., has an interesting one-liner when talking about the fraught, ambiguous, and ultimately arbitrary relationship between language and writing: Writing is not a garment, but a disguise. His point is that often, particularly in French, a written word has absolutely no relationship to its phonetic representations--his example is the french oiseau ("bird") that does not have a single letter that corresponds to its pronunciation [wazo]. But I wonder if we can take this further a bit, and say that not just writing, but language is not a garment, but a disguise. By altering one's speech, one alters one's identity, others' perspective of you--rightly or w...

I just saw this in Salon , for all of you voracious readers, or anyone looking to expand their reading horizons: .... The grandaddy of them all, however, is the Tournament of Books, mounted by the Morning News Web site and now in its sixth year. Unlike DABWAHA, ToB doesn't offer prizes to readers who make the most accurate predictions, and unlike all the other contests, it doesn't rely on polling readers to determine the winning books. Instead, a single guest judge selects the victor in each bracket, while the tournament's overseers, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, serve up commentary garnished with the occasional dab of sportscaster lingo ("quintuple toe loop"?). There's even an official statistician who crunches such questionably significant numbers as (I think I have this right) the ratio of an entry's length to its likeliness to ascend to the next round. The ToB has a healthy sense of its own absurdity, evidenced by the fact that the first round put H...

"Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts." (W.H. Auden, "Writing," in The Dyer's Hand)

Norris Chumley, a friend of mine, has an article in the Huffington Post on the Pew Forum, "religious," "spiritual," and the important distinctions between them. Check it out here .

From AP: By WASBIR HUSSAIN, Associated Press Writer – Tue Mar 23, 7:19 am ET GAUHATI, India – The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili. After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized "bhut jolokia," or "ghost chili," to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday. The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India's northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat. It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000. "The chili grenade has been found fit for use after trials in Indian defense laboratories, a fact confirmed by scientists at the Defen...

I just received the following announcement about an event at CUNY. If anyone is in NYC on April 7, it might be worth a couple hours of your time: Who Protects Antiquity? James Cuno, Lawrence Coben, Lawrence Rothfield While archaeological sites from China to Peru are being destroyed by looters in search of saleable antiquities, those charged with custodianship of the past are locked in fierce debate. Archaeologists, leaders of cultural heritage organizations, and ministers of culture, dealers, collectors, curators, and museum directors cannot come to terms. Who is responsible for preserving cultural heritage? Participants include James Cuno, Director, The Art Institute of Chicago and author of Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage; Lawrence Rothfield, author of Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum and Associate Professor of English at The University of Chicago; Lawrence Coben, Director of the Sustainable Preservation Initiative, an...

Thomas Cahill has basically a condensed, one-page, version of his book from years ago-- How the Irish Saved Civilization --in the NYTimes . The article is astounding in the assumptions it makes. Let's take a few of these: Upon their entrance into Western history in the fifth century, they were the most barbaric of barbarians, practitioners of human sacrifice, cattle rustlers, traders in human beings (the children they captured along the Atlantic edge of Europe), insane warriors who entered battle stark naked. And yet it was the Irish who were around to pick up the pieces when the Roman Empire collapsed in the West under the increasing assaults of Germanic tribes. The first assumption is the false dichotomy between "barbarian" and "civilized." "Barbarian" is basically a dustbin category for those "not like us." I hardly think that by contrast the practices of Greeks and Romans particularly marks them out for "civilized." They we...

Ô souvenir, Tes arbres sont en fleur devant le ciel, On peut croire qu'il neige, Mais la foudre s'éloigne sur le chemin, Le vent du soir répand son trop de graines. (Yves Bonnefoy, "Une Pierre," Les Planches Courbes ) Memory. It is something that fascinates so many ancient and modern thinkers. It is the basis of epistemology for Socrates/Plato: all knowledge is remembrance. It is the basis of the Self and where one finds God in Book 10 of Augustine's Confessions . The Bible constantly enjoins one to remember: zakhor , as the famous book by that name by Yosef Yerushalmi examines. It is the recollection of God's actions with Israel. Augustine depicts memory as a vast cavern with nooks and crannies in which some memories are easily accessed and others are hidden and only elicited with great difficulty. Bonnefoy's image, however, is not of the space of stone that can be filled, but organic. It is not empty space to be filled, but the spring flowering...

If only I had been able to start writing! But, whatever the conditions in which I approached the task (as, too, alas, the undertakings not to touch alcohol, to go to bed early, to sleep, to keep fit), whether it was with enthusiasm, with method, with pleasure, in depriving myself of a walk, or postponing it and keeping it in reserve as a reward for industry, taking advantage of an hour of good health, utilising the inactivity forced on me by a day's illness, what always emerged in the end from all my efforts was a virgin page, undefiled by any writing, ineluctable as that forced card which in certain tricks on invariably is made to draw, however carefully one may first have shuffled the pack. I was merely the instrument of habits of not working, of not going to bed, of not sleeping, which must somehow be realised at all costs; if I offered them no resistance, if I contented myself with the pretext they seized from the first opportunity that the day afforded them of acting as they...

Lately I cannot get enough of singer, songwriter Diane Birch's album, Bible Belt . The full voice, the largely upbeat folk style are fantastic. I have seen her on the late night rounds, but I didn't really start listening until I got a free download of her song "rise up" on iTunes song of the week. Although it is not the song she sings on the late night talk show rounds (there she usually plays "nothing but a miracle"), I particular like the song "choo choo": For a change of speed, check out "fire escape": Or for a specular song, try "mirror mirror": In my humble opinion, there is not a bad song on the album.

The following was just sent to me from Paul Karoff of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It partially tells us what we already know--that the division of the humanities is undergoing a major shift in personnel, relying upon part-time and non-tenure-track faculty (although right now I would be happy just to have a job next year!)--but gives more precise information (particularly when you click on the link ), which leads to essays on how this is working from field to field: Humanities Enjoy Strong Student Demand but Declining Conditions for Faculty New Data Available on College and University Humanities Departments CAMBRIDGE, MA – The humanities continue to play a core role in higher education and student interest is strong, but to meet the demand, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly relying on a part-time, untenured workforce. Those are among the findings from the Humanities Departmental Survey, conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a c...