Rough Theory

Theory In The Rough

Monthly Archives: November 2006

Power for the People

Leave a Comment Posted by N Pepperell on November 30, 2006

Sinthome has posted a brief response and promissory note to my last round of comments. I’m conscious that Sinthome will take up the issue in greater detail at a later point, but am also conscious of the nightmare schedule I have looming just around the corner – I’ll hope Sinthome will excuse me for tossing [...]

Conversations, Critical Theory, Philosophy of History

Argument as End and Means

5 Comments Posted by N Pepperell on November 29, 2006

Note: this post started as a comment to Joseph Kugelmass’ post on “The Love of Argument: A Response to Michael Berube” (cross-posted to The Valve). Since the reply has grown a bit cancerous, I’ll post it here instead, with the caveat that the post still has the character of a comment, in the sense that [...]

Conversations, Teaching

Demotivational Products

1 Comment Posted by N Pepperell on November 28, 2006

So many interesting, useful, productive things to do – and instead, I find myself browsing the catalogue at Despair.com – a site that produces demotivational posters and products. Just what every PhD student needs. I’ve enjoyed the posters for mediocrity, irresponsibility, idiocy, humiliation, and doubt, but the one I really want for my office door [...]

Links, Procrastination

In the Name of Science…

2 Comments Posted by N Pepperell on November 28, 2006

The things I do for Scott Eric Kaufman… As some of you already know, Scott has been conducting various kinds of research for his MLA panel on academic blogging. Now’s your very own opportunity to participate in a bit of science in the making. Or something like that. In what looks something like an attempt [...]

Blogging, Links

Crouching Tiger

Leave a Comment Posted by N Pepperell on November 28, 2006

I’ve been meaning for some days to pick up a few of the threads from Sinthome’s recent posts on identity and critique. Picking up these threads now, of course, is fraught with danger, as I might trigger the Lacan-filter my fellow reading group members have threatened to install. {As I wrote this sentence, a fire [...]

Conversations, Critical Theory, Philosophy of History

Reading Group Sing-Along:

3 Comments Posted by N Pepperell on November 27, 2006

Back in October, when I originally posted the forward projections on the reading group’s upcoming choices, I had left the exact selections for the coming week a bit on the vague side, just referring to the Language Log archives on the general theme we would be discussing, which relates to an ongoing debate between Pinker, [...]

Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Reading Group

Reading Group Reunited

Leave a Comment Posted by N Pepperell on November 27, 2006

So the reading group held its first in-person meeting in a month today. We caught up on one another’s US adventures (and the slightly less adventurous things that occured in Australia), and we discussed academic politics, the popularity of certain theoretical traditions within specific academic fields, barriers to interdisciplinary work, our fears about whether anyone [...]

Overheard, Reading Group

Revolt from the Margins

Leave a Comment Posted by N Pepperell on November 27, 2006

I’ve been re-reading Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom recently – a dog-eared copy from the library, filled with underlines, highlights and an extended argument against the book scattered through the margins of the text. The marginal commentary has one dominant voice – a voice very, very unhappy with Friedman – and, for some reason, fixated on [...]

Overheard, Political Economy

Itinerant Conversations on Dissertation Writing

2 Comments Posted by N Pepperell on November 27, 2006

I seem to find myself having stray conversations about dissertation writing around and about the blogosphere. Over at Sarapen, we’ve been having a conversation that started with Benjamin – specifically Benjamin’s comment that “The work is the death mask of its conception” – a particularly depressing observation that, unfortunately, tends to capture perfectly how I [...]

Links, Procrastination, Writing

Noblesse Oblige

2 Comments Posted by N Pepperell on November 26, 2006

I not infrequently run across articles, like this recent one from The Age, promoting the concept that some particular premodern society had a more humane relationship to nature than modern/western society does. The Age article, for example, cites professor of archaeology John Parkington, who notes the prevalence of representations of particular animal forms in rock [...]

Ecology, Philosophy of History

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