“To all who use libraries: this is our war,” by Elmer Davis, CBS reporter then director of the Office of War Information. 1942. (EPFL)
Month: February 2012
“Interesting book plate from the Harvard College Library.
From p.ii of The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1863).”
Submitted by alexandradit.
“We Just Don’t Have That Many Substances”
Lydia Kerr, a friend and colleague of mine from the University at Buffalo, has an interesting article responding to Eliza Slavet’s essay on Freud and Jewishness at the Religion & Culture Web Forum of the University of Chicago’s Marty Center. Lydia has put a lot of thought into the question of race and psychoanalysis, and this brief response is a good illustration of her ability to concisely demonstrate the usefulness of psychoanalysis—particularly, Lacanian—for thinking race. She argues that in addition to extended substance (materiality, genetics, the body) and thinking substance (the immaterial* realm of ideas and social construction), we also need to add what Lacan called a third category—la substance jouissante—enjoying substance, or jouissance. Take a look.
*I am increasingly of the opinion that the category of the ‘immaterial’ is of diminishing utility, and that Lacanian psychoanalysis seems to be a fruitful point of departure.
(via The Radium Age science fiction library – Boing Boing)
A publisher attempts to revitalize the dark ages of science fiction between Wells and the Golden Age.
The US financial markets have suffered over 18,000 extreme price changes caused by ultrafast trading, according to a new study of market data between 2006 and 2011.
(via Ultrafast Trades Trigger Black Swan Events Every Day, Say Econophysicists – Technology Review)
Metaphors Make Brains Touchy Feely – ScienceNOW
Researchers have found that textural metaphors—phrases such as “soft-hearted"—turn on a part of the brain that’s important to the sense of touch.
In other words, a metaphor triggers both the language part of the brain and the perceptual part of the brain that deals with softness/touch as a physical property.
Intensities and Lines of Flight: Deleuze and Guattari and the Arts
Going to be giving a paper, “The Clinic of Literature: Foucault, Deleuze, Aesthetics, & Psychoanalysis,” at the upcoming conference in the title. Below is the flyer; here’s a link to their website; more updates when the program comes out, &c.
