Month: July 2010

Closer than Gitmo, Further from Humane

In case any of you were still operating under the illusion that our prisons at home are somehow better than our secret prisons abroad, Lousiana has stepped in to disabuse you of that misconception. Sheriff Jack Strain of St. Tammany Parish is currently under scrutiny for his practice of confining “suicidal” inmates to 3’x3′ metal…

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Bon Mots: Derrida on the future of the Humanities

From “The University Without Conditions” in Without Alibi (Stanford University Press, 2002, p.231), Jacques Derrida describes “the Humanities of tomorrow”: These new Humanities would treat the history of man, the idea, the figure, and the notion of “what is proper to man.” They will do this on the basis of a nonfinite series of oppositions…

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