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Academia


I have included, to the left of all this nonsense, several links to a variety of pages of present interest or necessity to me. There you will find a link to my sister's wedding blog, the premier website on Marx, and a variety of other things (more to come, of course). The Marx, Hume, Pitkin, and Locke sites all link to essays that I am presently reading or rereading for my academic pursuits. Here are some questions I have to consider for next Wednesday's course.

1. Try to extract the central ideas from Adorno and Horkheimer. What version or versions of the enlightenment project are described here?

2. Compare Defoe’s story to Locke’s second treatise. Within a few pages Defoe says both that he was “reduced to a mere state of nature” and that “I might call my self King, or Emperor over the whole Country”. What are the politics of Crusoe’s island? Think especially about his relation to Friday, of course.

3. To sum up one of the topics discussed in this weeks’ seminar: Locke demystifies or “disenchants” (to adapt Weber’s term) the idea of kingship or sovereignty by arguing that its authority does not come directly from God, but from the law of nature (whose rightness however we can be sure of because of its origin in God’s will). Crusoe’s story is, on the one hand, the story of his relationship with nature; but also, on the other hand, the story of his relationship with God. How are the two related in this novel?

4. “World domination over nature turns against the thinking subject himself; nothing is left of him but that eternally same I think that must accompany all my ideas” (Adorno and Horkheimer p.26). Unlike Oroonoko, Crusoe gets to tell his own story. What are the characteristics and function of the first-person narrative voice here?


Doesn't that just sound exciting?

Comments

  1. JLD07 October, 2006 06:44

    nerd alert

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous07 October, 2006 11:20

    my head hurts just from reading the questions :P
    maybe i'll just stay at Sylvan and Fleming's and not go back to grad school :P

    MIss you so much!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown07 October, 2006 11:24

    Oh, Second Jess, be not concerned at your ability to manuever the great Mind of academia. Nobody knows what they're talking about, and we are all fearful students. It only takes time to learn familiarity. Take heart!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous11 October, 2006 09:52

    My apologies - I just do not have the brain power to even read those question.
    Your graduate program is way more intense than mine. Perhaps it is because yours is in Scotland and mine is just in Ventura...

    ReplyDelete

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