February 28, 2007
On the contemporary conditions of thinking…
 A New York Times article came out today on the role of IRBs and “mission creep” in academic ethics. Worth a look. The full text follows…
February 25, 2007
Nikolas Rose
Nik Rose is in California, giving a talk on Wednesday 28th http://stsc.berkeley.edu/STSC_Events.asp
Would lab folk like to meet up with him on Tuesday (27th) at about 4pm? If there is a good response we could quickly decide what form to meet with him in. The intro to his new book is available here intro
cheers
What we do, how we think; reflections on the Dewey and Latour exchange
Over the past couple weeks I have felt that a pressing task in ARC is to spend more time making clear statements about what we do, and how we think. This does not mean that we will come up with common answers, but that we should have more clear and explicit talk about what the range of answers is among the growing universe of people who are now involved. In some cases, this is not in order to cover new ground, but to rehearse how we got here, or at least how some of us think about our own points of entry.
February 22, 2007
Foucault, the classical liberal
Just looking back over Foucault’s interview in Essential Works v.3. He sounds like a classical liberal of the late 18th century variety. Here are a couple choice quotes:
February 20, 2007
Drugs
In the World of Life-Saving Drugs, a Growing Epidemic of Deadly Fakes Read more »
February 18, 2007
Anthropologist Does Web 2.0 on YouTube
Anthropologist Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography lab have made an interesting video on Web 2.0. I count it among the “avant gardist” commentary out there about information technology: everything is new. But watch it. It’s worth the four minutes and 31 seconds, and has gotten a good bit of attention.
February 15, 2007
Latour, Dewey and Concept work
I’ve just come off of a week of discussions with Bruno Latour, (more on that over here) who was a “distinguished visitor” for a week. In particular, I roped him into teaching in my class on the topic of Dewey’s The Public and its Problems and Lippman’s The Phantom Public. The discussion was electrifying, not least because Latour has recently read both books extremely carefully. His current work, which is increasingly in the domain of metaphysics, takes the Dewey-Lippman debate as an occasion for theorizing “political truth”–or the possibility of achieving a distinctive form of truth in politics. The diagnosis and critique from which PP proceeds is the debate with Lippmann on the status of publics and public opinion. Contrary to the wikipedia version of things, it’s clear that there is more agreement than disagreement between these two, and the Lippmann is almost as radical a thinker (perhaps more) than Dewey. Lippmann is usually branded as a conservative, a theorist of elitist democracy–but he was as much a pragmatist as Dewey, it was only his solutions that differed. Latour gave a fantastic lecture on the debate.
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the sight of death
Follow up to PR’s comment last week on this book by art historian TJ Clarke – an “experiment on art writing” – written as a series of diary entries. I am certainly not able to give an adequate summation of the text. However, for anyone wishing to dip-in, two entries stand out; 17th Feb and 22nd Feb. I would love to hear something on the book from someone more aesthetically articulate.. anyone?
February 14, 2007
Adrian McIntyre February 26 @ Noon
The AGORA-sponsored graduate student brown bag series is starting up again this spring. It is a series of informal presentations in which post-field graduate students who are writing up present their projects to other graduate students.
Adrian McIntyre is going first, on February 26, Monday, from 12 to 1:30 in the Gifford Room.
Jerome Whitington will be speaking later in the term, on April 9, same time, but I’ll send out another reminder about his presentation close to the date.
Dominic Boyer to Speak April 18
Dominic Boyer author of Spirit and System , on German intellectuals, will be speaking on East Germany and “the future” in Stephens Hall (either room 260 or 270, depending on which notice you read), April 18 at 12 noon. Sponsored by ISEEES and the Institute of European Studies.
I’ll also post this on the “current events” page on the ARC wiki.