107 books
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Like the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, postmodernism seeks to institutionalize dishonesty as a legitimate school of thought. The idea of truth as the ultimate goal of the intellectual is discarded. In its place, scholars are asked to pursue political objectives--so long as those political objectives are the 'correct' ones. Postmodernism is not fringe within the community of scholars. It is central. This tells us a great deal about the life of the mind today. Peruse any university cour
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― Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas
― Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas
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Barthes announced, “I am not lovingly gazing toward an Oriental essence—to me the Orient is a matter of indifference, merely providing a reserve of features whose manipulation—whose invented interplay— allows me to ‘entertain’ the idea of an unheard-of symbolic system, one altogether detached from our own.” The lesson of Japan for Barthes was “the possibility of difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems.” Like Wilde, Barthes does not locate Japaneseness in a
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A beta trial for a post-structuralist reading group. Any takers?
19 members,
last active 7 years ago
Reading and discussing works of Lotman, Barthes, and others
4 members,
last active 9 years ago
