On this blog, almost exactly a year ago, I posted an entry on the importance of what I called the work of mourning. That post was prompted by my attendance at the SPEP business meeting, which every year includes eulogies of the SPEP members who have passed in the previous year. I was disturbed by…
Read MoreApparently, Memphis is about halfway between Texas and Philaedelphia. Also, apparently, I am the hostess with the mostest. This week my apartment runneth over with friends on their way from one of those places to the other. So, please forgive my absence on this blog for the next couple of days. I’ll be back on…
Read MoreMy “Search for Values” class began our section on tragedy at the end of this week with Oedipus Rex. (We’ll read Antigone next week.) Sophocles’ “trilogy” is one of those works of literature that I always need to read again to remember how great it is. Part of that, I think, is due to the…
Read MorePrefatory disclaimer: I am fully aware that the following “crisis” only legitimately qualifies as a “crisis” for those of us in academia. Which, of course, means that it’s not a crisis at all. I hate, hate, HATE the practice of submitting panel or paper “proposals” for conferences. The way this always works out, or at…
Read MoreAnyone who’s ever read Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death, one of the greatest books ever on secrecy, has certainly had to grapple with the aporia of the secret. Of course, the “secret” of that text (such that there is one) is that there is no Secret. This is partly true because, structurally speaking, someone…
Read MoreI’ve been invited to speak as one of the panelists in a colloquium entitled “Violence: The American Tradition?” coming up in a little more than a week. I am still working out what it is that I want to say. My co-panelists are a historian and an artist, and we are each expected to address…
Read MoreSeveral weeks ago, when my class was still reading Homer’s Iliad, I tried to goad my students into making comparisons between the Trojan War and our current war in Iraq. That didn’t go over so well, and at the time I wasn’t sure why. I suspected that it was still early in the semester and…
Read MoreI run the “Philosophy Film Series” (and the corresponding “Pub Talks”) at my college, a task I enjoy so much that it doesn’t even seem like work. I’m always pleasantly surprised to find that our students are very sophisticated film viewers, and my job as the facilitator of our discussions is often impeded by my…
Read MoreThere was a film review of the new Wes Anderson flick The Darjeeling Limited last week in The New Yorker in which the reviewer asks: Can you have a thriving movie culture in a country without enough trains? It’s a great question– for those of us interested in all genres of American art. I, too,…
Read MoreI went to a roundtable the other night on “The Aesthetic” hosted by our English department. As you might expect, much of the discussion was guided by Kant’s Critique of Judgment, supplemented with the requisite considerations of Baumgarten and Burke. At one point, the discussion turned to the “sublime” and, of course, to the ready-to-hand…
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