analepsis

“So as to give them courage we must teach people to be shocked by themselves.”

“Verás Que Um Filho Teu Não Foge A Luta”

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 18, 2013

BRAZIL-protests

activism, free speech, Images, neoliberalism, politics, The Americas

Debt Control

1 Comment Posted by on June 16, 2013

I can’t find a proper cite for this quote though it has been circulating the web for some time.

noam

criticial terms, capitalism, Higher Education, neoliberalism

Literary Fiction and the Open Mind

2 Comments Posted by on June 16, 2013

Opening the Closed Mind: The Effect of Exposure to Literature on the Need for Closure.

Djikic, Maja maja.djikic@rotman.utoronto.ca
Oatley, Keith
Moldoveanu, Mihnea C.

Creativity Research Journal. 2013, Vol. 25 Issue 2, p149-154. 6p

Abstract:

The need for cognitive closure has been found to be associated with a variety of suboptimal information processing strategies, leading to decreased creativity and rationality. This experiment tested the hypothesis that exposure to fictional short stories, as compared with exposure to nonfictional essays, will reduce need for cognitive closure. One hundred participants were assigned to read either an essay or a short story (out of a set of 8 essays and 8 short stories matched for length, reading difficulty, and interest). After reading, their need for cognitive closure was assessed. As hypothesized, when compared to participants in the essay condition, participants in the short story condition experienced a significant decrease in self-reported need for cognitive closure. The effect was particularly strong for participants who were habitual readers (of either fiction or non-fiction). These findings suggest that reading fictional literature could lead to better procedures of processing information generally, including those of creativity.

 

Conclusion:

It is hoped that this experiment will stimulate further investigation into the potential of literature in opening closed minds, as well as give one a pause to think about the effects of current cut-backs of education in the arts and humanities. In ancient Greece, all students, no matter their future profession, had to know Homer by heart. The method may seem outdated, yet one may still wonder how such an immersion in literature may have contributed to the education of philosophers, mathematicians, and writers who, although separated from present time by two-and-a-half millennia, developed minds whose supple and agile turns are still admired.

Reading

Lagging the Popgeist: Submarino (Denmark 2010)

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 13, 2013

As you’d expect from an alumnus of Dogme 95, Thomas Vinterberg’s Submarino employs light deftly as a means of emphasizing dramatic content. There are several remarkable scenes– an improvised baptism, for example, and shots of a man in the grip of addiction– where set lighting is key to the audience’s response. Notably, however, Vinterberg has chosen not to adhere to Dogme 95′s purist admonition to use only natural light sources as he did in 1998′s Celebration. As a result, this aspect of the mise en scene is textured by contrasts: the saturated flash of television sets in an electronics store window counterpoints a pale grey afternoon sky or the sickly fluorescence of a pub men’s room.

Submarino‘s story is fairly unsparing: two brothers raised by an alcoholic mother briefly encounter each other as adults after years apart. The eldest, Nick, has just been released from prison, while his younger brother (who is referred to only as “Nick’s brother” or “Martin’s father”) struggles to manage a heroin addiction as he raises a son. A quiet foreboding accumulates as the plot advances (and regresses), one that made me think of Requiem for a Dream. Indeed, if there is an obvious criticism to be made of the film at the level of content, it is that Submarino‘s characters suffer far too much. The parallel with Aronofsky’s Requiem– especially one of the physical forms this suffering takes– seems more of a repetition than a correspondence. This echo could be down to the source material, a novel by Jacob Bengtsson that has yet to be translated into English. Not to be cryptic, but once you’ve seen both films you’ll see what I mean.

Still, Vinterberg offers the surviving characters a shot at redemption. And if he does so quietly, almost tacitly, the final sequences of Submarino lighten a burden the audience has been compelled to share.

Film Reviews, Lagging the Popgeist, Summer Posts

Forgive All Student Loan Debt

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 12, 2013

“With all the other high-anxiety news out there — from NSA snooping to Syria to the trial of Trayvon Martin’s killer — there’s a quiet crisis that could get lost in the shuffle: If Congress doesn’t act, on July 1, students attending school on subsidized Stafford student loans — loans awarded on the basis of economic need — will see their interest rates double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.

“Brandon Anderson is one of those students, and he’s started a petition urging Congress to keep the loan rate from doubling. Brandon, a veteran who is working with the I Am Not a Loan campaign, is worried about graduating with around $25,000 in debt, and with good reason. For someone just starting out on a career in an uncertain economy, debt like that — and for many students, it’s even more — can be a major obstacle to getting established in life, starting a family, and all the things we used to take for granted for young adults.

“Not surprisingly, this burden falls heaviest on young people of color, who remain on the losing end of America’s yawning racial wealth gap.”


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/preeti-vissa/forgive-all-student-loan_b_3429758.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

capitalism, Higher Education, neoliberalism, politics

Reading and Screening

2 Comments Posted by on June 12, 2013

Here’s a reading list and a filmography for those lassitudinous days of summer.

Books I read Spring semester when I should have been doing other things:

David Peace, Nineteen Seventy-Four

I’d set this crime novel against anything written by James Ellroy or Massimo Carlotto in terms of its terse syntax and hardcore violence. The basis (with the other books from the Red Riding Quartet) for a series of recent film adaptations. Peace’s four novels have been celebrated as “an occult history of Thatcherism” (i.e. neoliberalism).

Read more of this post

Film, Recommended Reading, Summer Posts

Edward Snowden and the Ethics of Truth Telling

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 9, 2013

“The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

“The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

“Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.”

 


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20bento-box:Bento%20box:Position1

Summer Posts ,

Crime (HUM415)

2 Comments Posted by on June 8, 2013

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

crime, n.

Pronunciation:  Brit. /krʌɪm/ , U.S. /kraɪm/
Forms:  ME crym, ME–16 cryme, ME– crime; Sc. pre-17 chryme, pre-17 17 cryme, pre-17 17– crime.
Etymology:  < Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French crime (French crime ) sin, wrongdoing, criminal act (12th cent.; in Middle French also accusation (15th cent.)) < classical Latin crīmen charge, accusation, matter for accusation or blame, reproach, offence, misdeed, in post-classical Latin also sin (late 2nd or early 3rd cent. in Tertullian) < the base of cernere cern v.1 + -men (see -ment suffix). Compare Old Occitan crim, Catalan crim (13th cent.), Spanish crimen (13th cent.), †crim (14th cent.), Portuguese crime (13th cent.), Italian crimine (a1306).
Contemporary Culture, criticial terms

The Surveillance State III

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 7, 2013

“The Obama administration is invoking an obscure legal privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny of its secret collection of the communications of potentially millions of Americans.

“Civil liberties lawyers trying to hold the administration to account through the courts for its surveillance of phone calls and emails of American citizens have been repeatedly stymied by the government’s recourse to the “military and state secrets privilege”. The precedent, rarely used but devastating in its legal impact, allows the government to claim that it cannot be submitted to judicial oversight because to do so it would have to compromise national security.”

 


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20bento-box:Bento%20box:Position2:sublinks

Summer Posts ,

The Surveillance State II

4 Comments Posted by on June 6, 2013

“The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

“The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

“The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.”


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-2%20Special%20trail:Network%20front%20-%20special%20trail:Position1

Summer Posts ,

← Older posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 77 other followers