Bibliophile: Sex, Sexy Sex, and Cowgirls

There are some things money can't buy.  Sadly, books are not one of them.

This is Bibliophile.


This week, we're going to my old alma mater, the University of Saskatchewan.  The site's changed quite a bit from when I was still using it on a regular basis.  They've got a new book feed that offers a lot of different options, from sorting them accordingly to library to looking at new Dewey Decimal entries, new Library of Congress entries, and new local entries (theses and so forth).  Their system that lists the new books is updated every Monday, which is why this list is from August 27th to September 2nd.  It's only 212 items.  That's normal, I think, for the week between spring and fall semesters, but I'll admit that I'm glad I don't have a metric ton of books to shift through, as is the case for some universities.  Let's get to it.  

Zoographies : the question of the animal from Heidegger to Derrida / Matthew Calarco One of my new roommates has a dog, a giant golden retriever named Cooper.  I've never lived with a dog on a long-term basis, and never spent much time around an older, larger dog--it's always been very enthusiastic little creatures.  Cooper barks a little when someone comes in, but otherwise, he's pretty quiet, content to walk around with his toys and slump into his resting spots.  He's a rather relaxing presence to have around.  (And due to our schedules, I may have spent more time around him than my other roommates.)  I bring this all up to get back to the point that animal studies interests me because it's so directly applicable to our lives.  Humans have adapted animals into our daily routines, and adapted to having animals.   Calarco's big concern regarding the human position with animals is that we're too anthropocentric in our approach, and he's bringing out some big name theorists to support his stance: Heidegger and Derrida, obviously, but also Agamben and Levinas.  Continental philosophy, Carlaco argues, despite its applied bent, has a blind spot where animals are involved, and he wants to change that.  He's interested in removing the animal/human distinction entirely.  I don't think that calling for a less anthropocentric view is a radical stance in animal studies, and trying to enlarge the term animal to include human strikes me as a movement similar to the object-oriented ontology approach of turning the subject into a type of object.  But Calarco's approach seems useful for anyone wanting to see philosophy in a more theoretical sense get engaged with animals.  H.  Me sexy: an exploration of Native sex and sexuality / compiled and edited by Drew Hayden Taylor It struck me when I moved to Ontario that Native issues are much less visible than they are in Saskatchewan. It's especially odd when you consider the Ontario Aboriginal population is double that of Saskatchewan's. It's a little less odd, I think, when you compare the proportion of Aboriginal population to the population at large; there's just more people in Ontario in general. Still, there's a definite cultural difference, and it shows in things such as this entry, as the University of Saskatchewan, just in a random week, seems to be getting a lot more books on Aboriginal History than I ever noticed at my current university. I could have made that point with any of the books, I guess, but Taylor's was clearly the sexiest of the bunch. I mean, it's right there in the name. The book is a sequel, of sorts, to Taylor's earlier anthology of Aboriginal humor, Me Funny. There's clearly a sense of humor here too, as Me Sexy sports a cover satirizing the Harlequin romance. In addition to Taylor, it has entries by Lee Maracle and Tomson Highway, among others. I imagine it, like Me Funny, is going to have a very long life as a regular selection for Canadian English classes.   H. The search for survival : lessons from disruptive technologies / Henry C. Lucas, Jr This is one of those pop business books that appear frequently in libraries' new acquisition files.  I wonder sometimes if these books are purchased because they're interesting cultural artifacts for analyzing business discourse, or because the business academics actually believe this is how business should be conducted.  I really hope it's not the latter.  (Sorry; I'm still annoyed by last week's "The I in Team.")  Lucas' book is actually debatably not pop at all (not that there's anything wrong with pulp) but a thoughtful set of reflections.  Lucas' argument is that some businesses are failing to adjust to rapid changes in technology--and it's very rhetorically interesting that Lucas chooses to call these changes disruptions, as if they're momentary deviations from some ideal course.  The really interesting part, of course, is his choice of case studies of failed or failing businesses: Kodak, the New York Stock Exchange, newspapers, print books, education, dictatorships.  It's a set of rather diverse examples, but if he can bring them all together meaningfully, it should be a good book.  H. Sex, politics and society : the regulation of sexuality since 1800 / Jeffrey Weeks Ah, more sex.  That ought to bump us up in a few search engines.  Weeks' subject is as the title suggests: a map of the official attitudes towards sex in terms of class difference, family, childhood, female sexuality, and homosexuality, and how these have changed since 1800.  Its focus is entirely on Britain (which explains the class emphasis) and this is the 1989 second edition, which means that it has an extra chapter on the effects of AIDS.  I imagine it would be a little out of date now, the fact that it's still being purchased by libraries decades later argues for its continuing significance. H. The Paradox of Professionalism : Lawyers and the Possibility of Justice / edited by Scott L. Cummings U of S has a Law College, so it's no surprise that a significant portion of their new books are law-related.  It's an easy joke that lawyers are generally depicted as amoral money-grubbers bending the law to their own end, and Cummings wants to address that subject.  The essays in this book speak to the "paradox" of the lawyer, that their commercial aims often have to be at odds with justice.  In fact, it goes further than that, with various writers arguing that conceptions of justice and fairness are always determined and shaped both by lawyers and larger political forces.  In particular, the book argues that self-regulation in the interest of power is against justice and the health of the profession.  Essay subjects include law considerations in South Africa and Thailand, professional relationships between lawyer and client, and the historical role of lawyers in terms of society's conscience. The reverse cowgirl : stories / by David Whitton There`s a racy title for ya. I`m not a big fan of short stories, generally speaking; my tastes tend towards the ongoing epics (hence my attraction to fantasy lit). But the odd short story collection has come my way every now and then. Whitton's book is a collection of dark and comic stories about people pushed to their breaking points. It's a mix of sci-fi and, uh, non sci-fi, with some very odd subjects: the Denmark corporation fighting rebels to keep its trademark on their water; the title story, which is about time bubbles and broken condoms; two women who both focus their seductions on bus drivers compete over the same driver. The last "dark comedy" short story collection I read was Jim Knipfel's "These Children Who Come At You With Knives," which I found to be too mean-spirited to be actually funny or entertaining. Hopefully, Whitton's book doesn't have the same problem. Naval gazing : the Canadian Navy contemplates its future / edited by Ann Griffiths and Eric Lerhe Points for the title.  I'm not actually interested enough in the subject to look up what the book's about, but points for the title. H. And that's what caught my eye this time around.  See you next week. Later Days.