I should like to thank the many commentators who had kind
things to say about me in response to my recent post. Perhaps it would be ungracious
of me to note that I was speaking wryly, puckishly, self-deprecatingly, I might
even dare to say ironically. The web
seems well suited to pontification, anger, burlesque, and the more obvious
forms of comedy, but not so much to gentler efforts at humor. Perhaps a
judicious scattering of appropriate emojis would help.
Sunday, July 24, 2022
😉
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9 comments:
I took your remark as intended because it's clearly not the case and folks who are actually in that category are usually loath to joke about it.
Dear Professor, what you say expresses one of the experiences I have also had in written communication on the web.
It's a bit like painting pictures with only primary colors. Can we imagine a performance of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing with other people standing behind Benedict and Beatrice, constantly holding up a sign with emojis depending on what they are saying?
I'm not so sure. It's a theme to which you return now and again, and why not? Your teaching partner has left the stage. Don't we all lapse into self-doubt? Perhaps apocryphal, but the story goes that Beethoven on his deathbed said, "I did have a certain talent...didn't I?" The therapist who often told that story would then add, "The belief is real, the doubt is false." Emojis? One of Hegel maybe.
I assume that you are always talking somewhat ironically and think today everyone needs more comic relief and yet they tend to perceive jokes as attempted assaults on their identities and feelings what ever you intend.
Distracted students need to be further distracted from their usual focus and see the world in a fresh way. Jason Stanley from Yale University is working on an interesting project supposed rooted in the African American intellectual tradition called "Preparing for a Fascist America" and here is his video clip/lecture in Vienna from July 19, 2022:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5bfeEXZy9A&ab_channel=IWMVienna
Stanley thinks that there is an emerging fascist movement within the Republican Party which uses social conservatism to slip its way into power and take over the judiciary in order to spread nonsense about a mythic past and national humiliation. There is nothing ironic about the world's leading democracy becoming the center of fascist aggression and domination of the people. Seen from the history of the black experience in America, fascist actions were always part of how the police state related to them and their protests and so America was never the land of the free because of its diet of propaganda and absurd worship of the legal system as self-validating authority.
Irony doesn't just live in America, America lives immersed in its own ironies and does not listen to its woke philosophers or rants by Jason Stanley.
To Prof. Couture’s point regarding Jason Stanley’s project, the Black comedian Dave Chappell once did a monologue as host on SNL during Trump’s presidency, and his appointment of three conservatives Justices, offering lessons to liberal Whites on how to survive by learning to live like a N---er.
More directly, many Americans treat the Constitution as scripture. You could use an editor.
New and may be of interest:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167193
Forgive me for being a trifle skeptical that this is a truly disinterested analysis of the Russian economy.
I note, first of all, that some of the language in the Abstract is a bit one-sided. E.g,, “Defeatist headlines . . .,” certainly suggests that the authors are coming at their argument from a certain point of view. And then there’s the information, stated in a somewhat supportive way, that “The Kyiv School of Economics and the McFaul-Yermak Working Group have led the way in proposing additionl sanctions measures.” [Note, the name of this latrer org. is, it seems, from its own website, “The Yermak-McFaul International Working Group on Sanctions against Russia.” See the Wikipedia entry. Perhaps in putting the distinguished American political scientist-diplomat first, rather than the Ukrainian government official, the authors of the Abstract unconsciously fell into a little bit of UScentric thinking?] And lastly, there’s some evidence that the aforementioned Yale Institute is hardly a neutral scientific organization. E.g., https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/chief-executive-leadership-institute-honors-president-volodymyr-zelensky-legend
Note, I am not disputing the right of any of the foregoing to harbor certain views on what’s happening in Ukraine or to act on these views. I am, however, urging that the analysis to which aaall has just directed us be viewed for what it is: one more among the endless pieces of propaganda coming at us from all directions. It should be viewed with care, as should all the other things which now flood in on us, including on this blog site, seeking to shape our thoughts and actions.
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