“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are
absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin,
without even opening them.”
―
Mark Twain
This week on Bibliophile: we look at the new books of New Brunswick's Acadia University. After the break, of course.
The Acadia University Library doesn't have a new books option, but it does allow subject searches that can be limited by date range, so we'll plug in some subject names, and see what's new in 2013. The subject "Philosophy" alone has 226 results, so we won't be wanting for choice.
End of Gender: A Philosophical Autopsy / Thurer, Shari L.
Thurer argues that our gender binaries are collapsing. Men can take on "feminine" roles like teaching nursery schools, or nursing, for that matter. And women sport tattoos and smoke cigars (really? That's what you got for masculine behavior?). And a coed can realize she's biisexual, then get on with her otherwise mundane life. Aw, c'mon coed. You're selling yourself short. Using case studies from her 25 years as psychologist, Thurer uses postmodern theory and psychoanalysis to argue why this blurring of lines is happening now. I'm kind of skeptical, to be honest. I'm not going to claim to be up on my gender theory, but based on the accounts I've seen of transexuals and homosexuals on the Twine circuit, among many, many other things, the end of gender isn't here yet, and declaring that it is here belittles what those people are going through. And it belittles the actual struggles a lot of people face in their day to day lives. Have things gotten better? I think so and I hope so. But we're not at the end yet, whatever that end may be.
Impossible Objects / Critchley, Simon, and Carl Cederstrom and Todd Kesselman
Impossible objects are those that are hard to talk about: poetry, film, music, humor. Man, these people might be looking in the wrong places, then, because in my neck of the theory woods, there has been a LOT of talk about poetry, film, and music, and some humor too. I get their point though; there are experiences for which our language seems to fall short, which draws our attention to how our languages shape the meaning of such experiences. We can, they argue, enjoy these things without having the critical background, so if no critical background is necessary, how can philosophy speak to what actually matters? the book has a different general topic and set of philosophers for every chapter: Levinas and Derrida and deconstruction; nihilism and Nietzche; Gramsci and Hegemony, and so forth. It's not a particularly long book--the book proper ends at page 163--but it seems to take its subject seriously.
Superman and Philosophy: What Would the Man of Steel Do? / Irwin, William, and Mark D. White
I'll admit, when I saw this title, I winced. Not because I'm a little sick of the whole "superhero pop philosophy" thing, although I won't say I'm not. Really, it was because, well, I could see in my mind how such a book would unfold. Out of all the better known superheroes I can think of, Superman is more a bundle of philosophical concepts than a real character in his own right. There's Nietzsche and the uber-man, of course. You can get some postcolonialism out of his status as an immigrant. You could probably fill an entire book out of what Grant Morrison did to him alone. There's the moral issue, to have all the power of the world and vow to use it sparingly. I think you could make something out of Lex Luthor, as an embodiment of techno-industrial age. But it's all so... low-hanging fruit, I guess? It's a collection of essays, divided up into parts. Part 1 is Ethics, Judgment, and reason, with essays on Superman and Practical Reason, his role as a journalist, and the importance of a moral upbringing (the nature/nurture part of his immigrant status). Part Two is Truth, Justice and the American Way: What do they mean?, with essays asking about the ethics of secrecy in the secret identity, and Superman as American icon. Part 3 is Nietzsche and Superman, which I totally called, including a chapter on Lex Luthor as Existential Anti-Hero. Part Four is on what we expect from Superman, with essays on the problem of violence in Kingdom Come, among others. Part Five looks at Krypton, and Superman's nature as an outsider. And the last section seems a hodgepodge, with essays on Superman and identity, Suerpman family resemblance, and Superman and telepathy. The Kingdom Come essay was a welcome surprise. To be honest, the pop culture topic + philosophy books are a dime a dozen these days, but this looks like a perfectly servicable example of the form.
Ruined by Design: Shaping Novels and Gardens in the Culture of Sensibility / Brodey, Inger Sigrun
Well there's a subtitle that makes you look twice. This book is part of a series, "Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory." Brodey's argument is that the rhetoric of ruins shapes architecture and literature, requiring the novel to adjust to notions of authorship and narrative to fit with prevailing aesthetics, which has happened in 18th century discussions,as well as in the culture of sensibility. In essence, one of the main points here is how artificial we are when it comes to describing nature. Brodey offers a list of representative novelists for the subject, which includes Laurence Sterne, Mary Wollstonecraft, Goethe, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, and many others. Judging from a tone, it's a book rooted deeply in its subject; it's not for people who aren't very well-versed in 18th century writing, and at least partially versed in critical writing on that period.
Why Internet Porn Matters / Margret Grebowicz
The info blurb for the book begins "Now that pornography is on the Internet," which makes it sound both like this is some incredibly new, cutting edge thing, and that pornography has meant to get around to being on the Internet for a while, it's just really got a lot of things to do first, you guys. Grebowicz's argument is that the production and consumption of Internet porn is linked to an obsession with self-exposure in social networking media, which in turn is a symptom of the construction of the subject as transparent and communicative. The description goes on to claim that this is the first feminist critique that's looking at the effects of Internet porn distribution over what it depicts, which--without, again, much of a background in feminist theory, seems something that could be disputed. She argues that, contrary to this construction, sexual pleasure is not a human right. There are two ways of taking that statement--either Grebowicz thinks that sexual pleasure is being treated as a human right when it's actually a privilege for a select few, or that she thinks it can't and shouldn't be a human right. I've got more sympathy for the former than the latter. She's using Baudrillard, Butler, and Lyotard to construct an argument about sex, speech, and power that runs counter to the cyber-libertarian mottos. I don't know that I agree with her argument, but it sound like it could be interesting.
A Sneetch is a Sneetch and Other Philosophical Discoveries: Finding Wisdom in Children's Literature / Wartenberg, Thomas
Side question: who is the most terrifying children's writer, philosophically speaking? I'd put my money on Roald Dahl. Granted, this is every bit as much of a pop-philosophy book as the Superman one earlier was. But for whatever reason, I have a lot more good will for it. Perhaps I'm susceptible as anyone to a bit of childhood nostalgia. It's a book with an educational bent, considering how to move form the original children's books to basic philosophical discussions with your kids. And I like that too, as a general goal. The books covered include Harold and the Purple Crayon, Shrek! (was Shrek a book before it was a movie? That wouldn't surprise me--it felt like a very bookish plot, in the original form at least.), The Sneeetches, The Big Orange Plot, and the Paper Bag Princess. As you may have guessed from this list, it's focusing on picture books, which implies a very specific level of child development, and a very specific type of appropriate philosophical questions.
Rhetoric/Composition/Play through Video Games: Reshaping Theory and Practice of Writing / Colby, Richard; Matthew S. S. Johnson, Rebekah Shutlz Colby.
Topic: Games. I was recently introduced to the subject of using videogames to teach writing in the Dragons, Dungeons, and Digital Denizens book, specifically, the chapter by Trent Hergenrader, in which he explains how he used Fallout 3 to get his students to construct a fictional universe. It's one of those cases where my literary and academic interests align very closely, so my ears perk up when the topic is mentioned. Books on the subject of writing and games tend to fall into two subjects: teaching people to write for games, and teaching people to write better through games. This book is tending toward the latter, and looks like it would be invaluable to anyone (like me) interested in approaching videogames in a classroom context. Part I is on play, and contains essays on Facebook and writing pedagogy, a history of text in games (gulp--better read that one in particular), and the avatar in games. Part II looks at composition and includes gender and gaming, and using Legend of Zelda to teach writing. Part III has an essay by Ian Bogost called Exploitationware, an essay on queer sexuality and WoW,and an essay on collective intelligence and online RPGs. I definitely need to read this. Mental note to do so.
Digital Media Ethics / Charles Ess
Topic: Digital Media. Charles Ess, I was somewhat surprised to find, has made it onto my media studies list before, on at least two occasions. Perhaps I should actually read him at some point. I think I've referred previously to the fact that I'm becoming more aware that ethics of research is an issue for all digital media folk, not just the ethnographic-minded ones. The blurb says it's the first textbook on the issue, which is only true for a rather specific definition of textbook. If it's going for the student textbook market, it's a rather short book, at around 225 pages (for the core part). But it covers the basic topics, as it looks at the central issues, privacy, copyright, citizenship, and digital sex and games. That last chapter may make it worth my while to check the book out.
Television and the Moral Imaginary Society Through the Small Screen / Tim Dant
Topic: Media Studies. I really don't know how to parse the audience for this one. On the one hand, the description starts "Just how bad is television?" which suggests it's for a lay audience that automatically assumes it's a bad thing. On the other hand, it says it's drawing from Husserl, Lacan, Lefebvre, and Sartre, which are not exactly light theorists. Perhaps it's for a French audience that likes academics, but doesn't like television? Dant's argument is that television is the prime medium for sharing morality and general cultural behavior in a society. The TV shows we watch promote a general morality that seeps in without us even noticing it, a moral imaginary, or a repository of ideas about ways of living. I'll agree with the general sentiment, though I wonder how much television has been usurped with the Internet and the mobile phone at this point. Part of what Dant finds so interesting about television is that while there is an underlying system, this system is less defined than it would be if there was actually a guiding, central agency promoting a specific social agenda. There's a phenomenological flow to television that means it's both continous, and constantly broken into bits that are made to fit into larger segments. I'm not seeing anything here that's particularly surprising or compelling in terms of reading the whole book, but it does seem like it would make a good accompaniment to other media studies, such as the work Bernard Stiegler is doing, especially in Technics and Time vol 3.
Loving Big Brother: Surveillance Culture and Performance Space / John McGrath
Topic: Popular Culture. For a number of years--off and on during 2004-2008, I think--my brother and I would watch Big Brother during the summer. Not because we had any particular interest in the show, but because it was pretty much the only thin g that was putting out new episodes at the time. And every year, I'd lose interest once fall started and there were other, better things to do. This book, on the other hand, is more about surveillance in general, questioning why we seem to enjoy it, and why the claims that it prevents crime are overblown. His means to do so are visual art, performance, and pop culture, in a study of what we have to gain from being watched. The book was written in 2004 originally, and juxtaposes the aforementioned Big Brother show with 9/11, because... um... well, people like to watch. McGrath is looking into the lived experience of surveillance, and to that end, he's drawing on Foucault, Kant, Lefebvre, Benjamin, and Butler. We're really seeing a lot of the same names in various books today aren't we? I should start a Bibliophile Bingo.
Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism / Jim Collins
Subject: Popular Culture. Considering this book was originally published in 1989, I'm starting to question the viability of the Acadia U filtering function. Collins argues that the concept of culture has been undermined by postmodernism and popular culture, and the book is about what happens when culture becomes something that is represented by conflicting definitions. Looking at the table of contents, the book seems to be one of those "culture definition" books that were big at the time, thoroughly investigating what culture can mean, and to whom it means those things. The various headings contain phrases such as Zeitgeist, commodification, discussions of rock and roll, semiotics, textuality, and so forth. It's a surprisingly short book, at 159 pages, so if you want a basic introduction to cultural studies, it seems like it might make a good choice.
Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction / Damien Broderick
Subject: science fiction. I totally picked this one so I could see what the author defined as postmodern science fiction. Originally published in 1994. In particular, Broderick is looking at the intertextuality side of science fiction, how sci-fi readers are expected to pick up the tropes and vocabularies of one sci-fi author and be able to apply them to texts by other writers. It might say something about how far beyond postmodernism we've gotten that I don't think of this sort of writing as postmodern at all. One generation of writers are influenced by previous generations; current writers are influenced by other current writers. Granted, the postmodern writers generally do it more self-consciously, but it's not really that new an idea. Everything has a paratext, and no text is a vacuum. (Though some do suck. Heh.) Judging from the index, we're going to see quite a lot of Brian W. Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, Samuel L. Delaney, and Gary K. Wolfe, among others.
I'm counting twelve books, so I'll draw this Bibliophile to a close. See you next week!
Later Days.
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