Eagleton again. (repeats)

repeats

repeats. from Larkin to Baudelaire.

I had provided myself with the popular books of the day (this was sixteen or seventeen years ago), and for two weeks I had never left my room. I am speaking now of those books that treat of the art of making nations happy, wise and rich in twenty-four hours. I had therefore digested—swallowed, I should say—alI the lucubrations of all the authorities on the happiness of society—those who advise the poor to become slaves, and those who persuade them that they are all dethroned kings. So it is not astonishing if I was in a state of mind bordering on stupidity or madness. Only it seemed to me that deep in my mind, I was conscious of an obscure germ of an idea, superior to all the old wives’ formulas whose dictionary I had just been perusing But it was only the idea of an idea, something infinitely vague. And I went out with a great thirst, for a passionate taste for bad books engenders a proportionate desire for the open air and for refreshments.

Hersh was right.

 

Kitsch, Politics, Philosophy, Pedants and Children, Naturalism, Determinism, Make it Idiot-Proof,

Whole hour of pure 🌅https://t.co/jHZefUSzfj

— Anton Jäger (@AntonJaegermm) October 6, 2024 

It's a good lecture: the German academy, Humboldt, Marcuse, Wissenschaften, Mill, the defense of academic freedom over freedom of speech; Leiter touches all the bases. And as always, he twists them to his preferences. 

Any defense of academia as an arbiter of truth is vitiated by indifference to genocide, as it's always been vitiated by academic, qua academic, responses to crises. But the pretensions of Modernism: positivist, radical, vanguardist, technocratic; elitism of one sort or another, has rendered academics of all stripes immune to irony. One way or another, they're all big children. 

 

[Michigan in the World features exhibitions of research conducted by undergraduate students about the history of the University of Michigan and its relationships beyond its borders.]

STATE OF MICHIGAN

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR 

LANSING, MICHIGAN 48903

GEORGE ROMNEY

GOVERNOR

August 9, 1965

Dear Dr. Kaufman:

Your article, "Teach-ins: A New Force for the Times", in NATION of June 21st has been called to my attention. I  admire you for the depth of your conviction that you have performed an essential service for democracy; but, I would have wished you to be more objective in your presentation. Your phrase, "But presumably in the world of Governors and auto executives, business is always business, and sacred11 , is a neat stereotype, but obviously removed from the facts of the case. It certainly does not describe accurately my response to your original teacher strike proposal.

My reaction, that of the legislature, and your colleagues, too, should have made it crystal clear that our concern was for the majority of students, faculty, and administration at the University who did not choose to participate in your demonstration. The strike would have forced a cancellation of classes, whether this was desired or not, to be made up later if schedules · could be rearranged. Certainly

you felt your cause to be important enough to warrant "a departure from work as usual". And you anticipated an audience of 700 from a student body of 30,000. Following your example, it would be necessary for the whole University to defer to any 2% of the University community which felt it had a cause important enough to bring the tight schedule to a standstill.

Someone could write a book. The relation of Florence to Venice, to modernity.  Titian admitted he couldn't compete with Florentine facility; he had to do something else. But Picasso's best painting is an anti-formalist clusterfuck that works. Panofsky said he didn't use color plates in his book on Titian because they would only be an insult. The plates “were made from the best available originals and are all in black and white, not in spite but because of the fact that Titian was the greatest ‘colorist’ who ever lived.” And he doubted the attribution  of The Flaying of Marsyas.  Picasso said "when I don't have red, I use blue."

All repeats, but I'd never put the images side by side.

The ideal of Modernism was that it was a sort of return to the Renaissance, but the Renaissance was a loosening of rules, while Modernism was a closing down. Gursky’s nihilism begins in Seurat. To see Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as the high-point of 20th century painting is to imagine a century beginning with the Carracci and Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas and fading into mannerism. The idealism of Modernism is always the idealism of a church, or the equally strict, fearful, ironic mockery of the same church.

And again.

The Atlantic, The elite college students who can’t read books

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

The Connecticut Mirror: This Hartford Public High School grad can’t read. Here’s how it happened.

When 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz told Hartford City Council members in May that the public school system stole her education, she had to memorize her speech.

Ortiz, who was a senior at Hartford Public High School at the time, wrote the speech using the talk-to-text function on her phone. She listened to it repeatedly to memorize it.

That’s because she was never taught to read or write — despite attending schools in Hartford since she was 6.

Leiter asks a question. Read the answers.

I have gradually reduced the amount of reading that I assign in Philosophy classes and added documentaries and videos where possible. 

repeats. start here, work back to a defense of illiteracy by a friend of Henry Farrell, and then further.