Rough Theory

So after a bit of email ring-around, some advance notice of what the reading group will be looking at through the holiday period.

First: I know, I know – I was meant to post on PJ vs. CHF two days ago. I do still intend to do this – Adorno just happened rudely to intrude.

Second: I should have mentioned previously that LMagee and I have something of an… er… side pot going on Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. While not an “official” reading group reading (perhaps we can consider it a reading group subcommittee reading?), LMagee will write something on the book here at some noncommittal point in the future, and I will respond at some noncommittal point after that.

Third: inspired in part by Robert, the group will turn back to Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By, and then to the recent debate between Pinker and Lakoff, once we have finished our two-week detour on Derrida and Searle. LMagee has asked – sort of – to add one more reading to the Lakoff-Pinker discussion:

Firstly I thought that in the spirit of your recent Lakoff interlocuter, our eventual reading of Lakoff might also, if you’re willing (and if even if you’re not, since it is public…), include your previous Lakoff article, as a way of engaging with Chomsky-Pinker-Lakoff in relation to language and politics.

Fourth: So all of this should get us comfortably past the holidays and into the new year (ooo… that was strange to write – where did this last year go???). The proposal for the new year is that the reading group use this foray into “language and politics” as our transition point into a bit of Continental philosophy, of currently undetermined lineage.