Quotes

[Faust]

Indeed :-) Sometimes I use this thread as a pensieve of sorts, not necessarily something I agree with right away but something to come back to mull over. The next paragraph said that this fad has already past in Paris and will surely pass in the US.

This was a very interesting part of the book regardless, about what's wrong with the contemporary American university.

[laika]

well, he's right about derridean thought dominating much american scholarship at that time...but it's been over for at least 15 yrs. at this point.

academics are very fashiony in the way they adopt and discard ideas.

edit: that last bit is part of what's wrong, to go back to your point....

[Chant]

"Comparative literature has now fallen largely into the hands of a group of professors who are influenced by the post-Sartrean generation of Parisian Heideggerians, in particular Derrida, Foucault and Barthes. The school is called Deconstructionism, and it is the last, predictable, stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy. The interpreter's creative activity is more important than the text; there is no text, only interpretation. Thus the one thing most necessary for us, the knowledge of what these texts have to tell us, is turned over to the subjective, creative selves of these interpreters, who say that there is both no text and no reality to which the texts refer. A cheapened interpretation of Nietzsche liberates us from the objective imperatives of the texts that might have liberated us from our increasingly low an narrow horizon."

Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Even though such thing ("Deconstructionism") never existed here, I highly doubt that anything close to what is being described ever existed. And this kind of statement is immediately disqualified by the caricatural and hyperbolic way it's written (see bold parts). This is in my opinion typical of "faux-academic" writting. And a symptom of what we'd call here "intellectual poujadism".
In addition, what is he longing for ? "The knowledge of what these texts have to tell us". Ah ah ah ! The guy belongs to the 80's indeed - but 1880. Funny guy...

[Phantom]

One of the things I like about old music (if it's good), is that it can't get outdated. It already is - Albion Venables

[Peasant]

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
-oscar wilde

[MJRH]

^ topical

In History, stagnant waters, whether they be stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life and vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all. -Herbert Read

[interest1]

billboard of the day

[Fade to Black]

"The more you know who you are and what you want the less you let things upset you." - from Lost in Translation

[Lane]

That quote stuck with me, its so damn true.

[Alseal]

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler

[Czx]

"The art of being a slave is to rule one's master."
- Diogenes

Kind of echoes in me lately.
Also relevant to this:

[Fade to Black]

Ha Alseal that one is good, and totally resonates with me.

[vitalj]

[interest1]

[Lane]

Even the most primitive of societies have an innate respect for the insane.