Monday, August 16, 2010

A Post of Links

I'm back from my college reunion. If there are any cool links out there I missed, please share. As always, self-promotion is encouraged. (Also, if I owe any of you emails, you might want to remind me). Here are some of the interesting things I know I didn't miss:

I'm really behind on this one, but Inside Higher Ed did an interview with Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler on their new collection, After the Postsecular. It looks to be an exciting collection, and it was an fun interview.

Prodigies & Monsters have continued their reading of Ernst Bloch, this time focusing on the question of anamnesis. HJM has a beautiful post on Bloch's critique of it, and MLA has a fascinating response up with Isabelle Stengers defense of anamnesis.

Marc Hauser, a best-selling moral psychologist who has questioned the strong dividing line between humans and other animals, is currently under investigation for academic misconduct. This is something to keep our eye on, because of how important his work has been for many people in animal studies. (h/t Feminist Philosophers).

Peter Gratton has an insightful review of Bernard Stiegler's Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. My summary of how the review makes Stiegler's book sound like, "The psychotechnological apparatuses of kids these days, are being systematically recoded by the MTV and the twitter. If we don’t start engaging in an ontology of care, they’ll never get off my lawn".

Adam has another of essay-length blog posts up on "Deconstructing Veganism: Commodity, Reciprocity, and the Killing Contract." Definitely worth the read.

William E. Connolly has a post up on The Fragility of Things. It's a good post pushing us to recognize the interwoven issues of non-human and human problems. What is the consensus about The Contemporary Condition's heavy use of pictures in their posts? I like them until I actually go to read the post, in which case I always find it a little annoying. But don't let that keep you from actually reading the blog and this post.

While I was gone I got to see Arcade Fire perform. I've seen them before, but I am always impressed how much of an experience, an event, it is to see them live. An affective, religious conversion seems to occur. I'm going to link to one of my favorite songs (off the first album, rather than the new one), but it doesn't prepare you for seeing them live (it also features David Bowie for extra awesomeness).