bq. How can an interpretive theory gain legitimacy in two cultural markets as different as France and the United States? This study examines the intellectual, cultural, institutional and social conditions of legitimation of Jacques Derrida’s work in the two countries and develops hypotheses about the legitimation of interpretive theories. The legitimation of Derrida’s work resulted from a fit between it and highly structured cultural and institutional systems. In France, Derrida capitalized on the structure of the intellectual market by targeting his work to a large cultural public rather than to a shrinking group of academic philosophers. His work appealed to the intellectual public as a status symbol and as a novel and sophisticated way to deal with late 1960s politics. In the United States, Derrida and a group of prestigious literary critics reframed his theory and disseminated it in university departments of literature. His work was imported concurrently with the work of other French scholars with whom he shared a market. Derrida’s support is more concentrated and stronger in one discipline than the support for other French intellectuals. In America, professional institutions and journals played a central role in the diffusion of his work, while cultural media were more central in France.
I’ve got a book out! Framing Theory’s Empire [amazon]; or support your local independent publisher by buying direct. You can buy the paperback or download the entire book as a free PDF from the Parlor Press site. UPDATE: and it’s been marked down! Now Parlor direct is cheaper than Amazon. $17.60 vs. $22! A bargain! I’m still waiting for my paper copy to show. (Any of you contributors out there gotten yours yet?) I think the cover is rather handsome. But, then: a father should love his child. The lovely Belle Waring and I designed it together.
A very peculiar BBC report here, about the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge refraining from sponsoring Academies:
Oxford and Cambridge universities are snubbing the government’s flagship academy schools project. The government is urging universities to use their academic resources to support academies as part of the drive to raise standards in deprived areas. But the two famous universities have declined to commit themselves to sponsor an academy.
Just to be clear, I have no inside knowledge on this so there may be something going on that I don’t know, but nothing in the report justifies the use of “snub” in the headline, or “shun” in the text. It would be plain wrong of either University to commit to sponsoring an Academy unless it already had the relevant expertise on hand, and people with the enthusiasm to carry out the task. Cambridge might well have such resources, but I’d be surprised if Oxford does, and refraining from making a commitment until such resources are to hand seems perfectly sensible.
Another source of irritation. The article implies a connection between non-involvement in Academies and the fact that Oxford and Cambridge have high proportions of undergraduates coming from private schools.
This autumn the Universities Secretary, John Denham, urged universities to take an active role in secondary education by sponsoring an academy – with 20 universities already signed up. In particular, he highlighted the importance of such projects for universities which have an intake of wealthier students. Only 54% of students at Oxford University and 57% of students at Cambridge are drawn from state schools. “It is clear that the universities that recruit the vast majority of students from a small minority of society are missing out on a huge amount of talent,” said Mr Denham.
But involvement in Academies in deprived areas would — or should — do nothing to change this. Take the Academy which Oxford University might reasonably be asked to help with — the prospective Oxford Academy in Littlemore which serves the nearest deprived area to Oxford University (its about 3 miles fom the centre of town and I should declare an interest here — I attended Peers, the “failed” school on whose site the Academy will located, many years ago, though the catchment area hasn’t changed much in that time). Like most schools serving deprived areas, this prospective academy is unlikely to deliver many future Oxford undergraduates — the urgent issue for that school is raising the achievement of children who won’t go to University at all.
Gary Farber has been scraping by for a while on your previous generous donations, CT readers, but he’s in a world of hurt at the moment, so show some love.
In perhaps related news, some people just don’t know anything about being broke:
“The risk is that you could be modifying loans for people who don’t need it,” said Sharon Greenberg, director of mortgage strategy at Barclay’s. “There’s only so much you can do without talking to the borrower. You’re spending $60 a month on cable TV; can you get by with less? You’re spending $200 a month on food for two people, but food costs in your area show that you should be able to get by with $100 a month. These are the kinds of conversations that loan-servicing companies have to have with borrowers.”
Food costs in your area show that when there are no crawdads, you should be able to eat sand. No refinancing for you, Mr. Moneypants McRichington!!
I realize that some of the references in this video require a fairly intimate knowledge of the Silicon Valley scene, but not all so perhaps this will add a bit of amusement to your day regardless of your geek quotient.
Via Matthew Yglesias, this is enough to make a cat laugh. As I’ve argued elsewhere, although the Mearsheimer & Walt “Israel Lobby” does have a referent which is a real and definable set of groups and institutions, this lobby really doesn’t have all that much to do with Israel. Every time this slightly scary bunch of warlike, paranoid and rather right-wing people are asked to make a choice between the national interests of Israel and their own vanity politics, it’s Israel that gets shafted. Any concern over “divided loyalties” or what have you is completely misplaced – the “Israel Lobby” are nationalists of a completely imaginary state, one which has no meaningful politics of its own, no need to compromise with reality and no national interests other than constant war.
Note also that the well-known South Africa analogy, which has been pronounced to be intrinsically bigoted and anti-semitic by the wisest heads outside Israel, is considered normal politics by the head of government of that country. I begin to think that the Israeli state (which has, over the years, played its part in giving these nutters much more prominence and credibility than they deserve) has been lately finding the wingnuttier wing of American “pro-Israel” politics to be more trouble than it is worth. There are all sorts of reasons one might have to be less than happy with the human rights record of the State of Israel, but as far as I can see they don’t deserve to be blamed for the extremely negative contribution made to public debate in English-speaking politics by the political organisation trading under their name.
I was in Trier, Germany last week, famous for.. among other things, being the birth place of Marx.
I found the store filled with Marx merchandise amusing:
The “opium of the people” quote was only available on a magnet in German, not in English (other quotes were available in English), I’m assuming a conscious choice based on potential interest.
I couldn’t resist getting a copy of the poster that has the entire Communist Manifesto written on it with an image of Marx and Engels coming through from the text thanks to manipulation of the formatting.
I also got a postcard with a cartoon of Marx and the following quote: “Tut mir leid Jungs! War halt nur so ‘ne Idee for mir…”, which Babelfish completely butchers in its translation so I’ll try, but feel free to correct me: “Sorry kids! ‘Twas just an idea I had.”
Boarding a plane to Budapest later in the day added a twist to all this for me. While I can see friends and colleagues in the U.S. understanding why I would’ve picked up those items, I don’t think too many people in the town where I grew up would get why I’d want anything with Marx on my walls.
John Sides at _The Monkey Cage_ asks whether whites are more likely to support the death penalty when they think black people are being executed, and finds that the answer is yes.
In a 2001 survey conducted by Mark Peffley and John Hurwitz, a random subset of whites was asked:
“Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”
Somewhat favor: 29%
Strongly favor: 36%
Another random subset of whites was asked:
“Some people say that the death penalty is unfair because most of the people who are executed are African-Americans. Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”
Somewhat favor: 25%
Strongly favor: 52%
That is a 12-point increase in overall support
See more “here”:http://www.themonkeycage.org/2007/12/are_whites_more_likely_to_supp.html (and original paper “here”:http://www.uky.edu/AS/PoliSci/Peffley/pdf/Peffley%20&%20Hurwitz%20Death%20Penalty%20ajps_293.pdf.
The formal ratification process will take 90 days, but the effect is that Australia can take part in the Bali conference as a full participant, leaving only one significant holdout – the Bush Administration in the United States.
Isn’t it just enough that the _National Review Online_ seems to have published dodgy reporting on massive (and apparently entirely imaginary) Hezbollah invasions of chunks of Beirut, without the source of said reportage being the “co-author”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/01/in-the-tank-did-national_n_74954.html of _The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design_ ? ? Sweet.
So, for anyone who wants to know, “the Belgian crisis”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/19/the-ingredients-of-the-belgian-cocktail/ has arrived at a new absolute low. The coalition negotiations have been broken off. The negotiating Flemish and Francophone parties could not agree on the core issue – whether or not to openly debate in the next years the shift of certain governmental responsibilities from the federal to the regional levels. And I really don’t know what solutions are still available now. Almost all parties seem to impose non-negotiable demands or taboos that together make any coalition impossible. New elections? Not sure whether they would be constitutional – recall that the constitutional court has ruled that the electoral district Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde is currently holding unconstitutional elections, and that problem has not been solved either. To be continued.
[amazon]; or support your local independent publisher by buying direct. 
