Leigh M. Johnson

Dear NYT, please stop writing stories about Memphis politics.

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 6 Comments

Somebody, for the love of God, please make it stop. Once again, the New York Times has given us embarrasingly reductive, bordering on cartoonish and condescending, reportage about Memphis politics. This time, it’s an article provocatively entitled “Black Candidate Brings Race Into a Primary in Memphis.” (I’m shocked that they were able to refrain from…

Read More

Solicitation

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 3 Comments

Just today, I posted a solicitation for book recommendations as my Facebook status. I asked for fiction recs– proscribing Stieg Larsson in advance — and almost immediately received a host of literary endorsements from my many bibliophile friends (and, a pleasant surprise, from my students as well). I was happy to see that most of…

Read More

More Good Listenin’

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

One advantage of sabbatical life (a.k.a. the solitary writing life) is that you get all the music-listenin’ time you could ever want or stand. Assuming you’re one of those people who can work while you listen to music, which I am, you may find yourself compelled to supplement the ol’ iTunes Music Library from time…

Read More

Briefly Noted

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I’m working against some fast-approaching deadlines– also working in the midst of some please-ice-me-down-or-shoot-me-now heat indices here in Memphis– so all I can rustle up are a few truncated reflections on things that have piqued my interest of late. For those of you playing along at home, I’ve provided helpful and handy-dandy guides for filing…

Read More

Bon Mots: Fanon on Racism

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bon Mots, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

From his essay “Racism and Culture” in Toward the African Revolution (Grove Press, 1964, p.59-60), Frantz Fanon writes: It is at this level that racism is treated as a question of persons. “There are a few hopeless racists, but you must admit that on the whole the population likes…” “With time all this will disappear…”…

Read More

Due Process

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

Nassar al-Alwaki, father of alleged terrorist and Al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Alwaki, is suing the U.S. government for putting his American-born son on the military’s so-called “capture or kill” list. (All reports seem to indicate that the “capture or” part is rarely heeded. For all intents and purposes, these lists serve as execution orders.) The lawsuit…

Read More

Is Ground Zero A “Sacred” Site?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 6 Comments

As everyone knows, there has been much Sturm und Drang about the proposed Park 51 project (a.k.a., the “Ground Zero mosque”) and its proximity to the lower Manhattan site where the World Trade Center Towers stood before 9/11. Let me say at the outset that I’m not going to comment much here on the merits…

Read More

Deny and Imply

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 4 Comments

Gary Shteyngart’s new novel Super Sad True Love Story takes place in a not-too-distant future America that reads uncomfortably familiar and, consequently, entirely believable. There, America has suffered a sharp decline in global economic and political importance, and has refashioned itself as an almost unabashedly consumerist Security State– though the Horatio-Alger-esque resolve (and hubris) that…

Read More

Thinking In Images

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Thinking in Images 3 Comments

I was at a dinner party recently with colleagues and, per usual, the conversation at some point turned to bemoaning students’ sometimes less-than-ideal language skills. The complaints were standard fare– what ever happened to proper grammar? to sophisticated and orderly essay construction? to close and careful reading skills? to the capacity for clearly translating ideas…

Read More

Inception

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 6 Comments

“What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea.” — Dominic Cobb, protagonist in Inception If you buy the basic premise of the new film Inception, most of our ideas (perhaps all of them) begin deeply in our subconscious, in our dreams. There, they are born and grow, fertilized and fed in a world in which they…

Read More