Well, Duke lost, the Stormy Daniels interview was
interesting but somewhat disappointing, and I decided to make today’s lecture
the last in the series. So much for
anticipation.
I must confess I liked Stephanie Daniels. She came across as tough, pulled together, and
utterly in charge of her life, a stand up kind of person, unlike Trump. It will be very interesting to see how this
plays out.
Today’s lecture will be my thirtieth videotaped YouTube
lecture, a considerable pedagogical effort when you think about it. Even if you have not seen the first six Marx
lectures, you might want to watch this one, because it will follow a line of
argument that no one else, to my knowledge, has ever developed concerning Marx.
Three weeks from now I will begin a short six week course of
lectures here at Carolina Meadows under the auspices of the Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute branch at Duke, an Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato. Then back to Paris for the Brussels lecture,
after which I will prepare for my Fall Columbia course.
I am about to score an enormous triumph here at Carolina
Meadows, a first for me: I will next
month be elected to serve for two years as the Precinct Representative of
Building Five. How do I know I will win
the election? Because I am the only
candidate. I tried this once before in
1977, when I put my name in for one of two at-large seats on the Northampton,
Massachusetts School Committee. I had
heard on the radio that there were no candidates, and with two seats I thought
I could win running unopposed. But after
I threw my hat in the ring, two other folks did also, and it was a real
race. I played up the fact that I was
the Cubmaster of the local Cub Scout Pack and also a veteran of the
Massachusetts National Guard, but when the votes were counted, I had run third,
losing by 16 votes. A recount cut my
loss to 12 votes, but there it was. So unless
one of my neighbors in Building Five decides to make a run, I will, at
eighty-four, finally fulfill my lifelong ambition to win an election.
Congrats on all of the above. As I enter my 70s, I look for hope and for signs that it is in the later years, for some people at least, that one's best work is produced. So I am happy to hear about this last and ground-breaking lecture. I also remember back when you were debating doing youtube lectures. I hope you are pleased that you decided in the affirmative. I think you ought to begin plotting a graph which measures total youtube views (YT probably does that for you!). Also, I have personally caved regarding FB. I have my own "business" page and do "boosts." It is quite amazing. For about 20 bucks (and posts can include links, videos,photos...whatever), you can target an audience (a la Cambridge Analytica) over whatever period you wish and you'd be surprised at the response. Arise Gray "Social Media" Panthers. (I think to have a business page you also have to have a personal page. I'm not sure about the rules.)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHo hum
ReplyDeleteStill in the midst of watching lecture 6 on Marx (doing it in pieces, but am toward the end), and will then watch the last one.
ReplyDeleteAmong other things these lectures were, for someone (in my case) who read Capital v. 1 a long time ago, a good review of some of the bk's key points and passages, and I look forward to the last lecture, whether or not I end up being convinced by its argument.
----
Totally off-topic: Am reading a recent biography of Freud (originally published in French) that I stumbled on in a local lib. Freud as a young man studying in Paris wrote some revealing (and politically quite reactionary) letters to his fiancé about his dislike of aspects of Paris and its revolutionary history and 'spirit,' in the biographer's words (and this was not that long after the Paris Commune). Given your interests in both Freud and Paris, thought worth mentioning.
Good luck with the election!! CP
ReplyDeleteProfessor Wolff --
ReplyDeleteHave you (or any other readers of this blog) ever heard of Moishe Postone? A colleague brought him to my attention due to his recent passing. I have read a good deal of Marx commentary but had never encountered him:
https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2018/03/22/moishe-postone-leading-interpreter-marx-and-scholar-european-intellectual-history
-- Jim
Definitely heard of Postone.
ReplyDelete(there was a commenter on another blog I read who referred to him fairly regularly. That commenter on that particular blog hasn't been around for a while, come to think of it.)