kriticulture

As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate. This principle is called "net neutrality" - and it's under attack. Internet service giants like Comcast and Verizon want to offer premium and privileged access to the Internet for corporations who can afford to pay for it. The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time

The fear out of which that book was written was that new materialism of the brain, which has given us drugs to change our personalities, and the materialism of consumer culture, which provides endless distractions and encourages the endless pursuit of more goods, were both antithetical to the project of literature, which is to connect with that which is unchanging and unchangeable, the tragic dimension of life. Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 207, Jonathan Franzen

By Gregory A Petsko An open letter to George M Philip, President of the State University of New York At Albany   Dear President Philip, Probably the last thing you need at this moment is someone else from outside your university complaining about your decision. If you want to argue that I can't really understand all aspects of the situation, never having been associated with SUNY Albany, I wouldn't disagree. But I cannot let something like this go by without weighing in. I hope, when I'm through, you will at least understand why. Just 30 days ago, on October 1st, you announced that the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts were being eliminated. You gave several reasons for your decision, including that 'there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs.' Of course, your decision was also, perhaps chiefly, a cost-cutting measure - in fact, you stated that this decision might not have bee...

By Chris Hedges (From truthdig ) The silencing of radicals such as Davis, who had been a member of the Communist Party, although he had left it by the time he was investigated by HUAC, has left academics and intellectuals without the language, vocabulary of class war and analysis to critique the ideology of globalism, the savagery of unfettered capitalism and the ascendancy of the corporate state. And while the turmoil of the 1960s saw discontent sweep through student bodies with some occasional support from faculty, the focus was largely limited to issues of identity politics—feminism, anti-racism—and the anti-war movements. The broader calls for socialism, the detailed Marxist critique of capitalism, the open rejection of the sanctity of markets, remained muted or unheard. Davis argues that not only did socialism and communism become outlaw terms, but once these were tagged as heresies, the right wing tried to make liberal , secular and pluralist outlaw terms as...

By Arundhati Roy Monday, November 01, 2010 (Courtesy: Znet. Link to the source. )      New Delhi, October 31: A mob of about a hundred people arrived at my house at 11 this morning (Sunday October 31st 2010.) They broke through the gate and vandalized property. They shouted slogans against me for my views on Kashmir, and threatened to teach me a lesson. The OB Vans of NDTV, Times Now and News 24 were already in place ostensibly to cover the event live. TV reports say that the mob consisted largely of members of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha (Women’s wing). After they left, the police advised us to let them know if in future we saw any OB vans hanging around the neighborhood because they said that was an indication that a mob was on its way. In June this year, after a false report in the papers by Press Trust of India (PTI) two men on motorcycles tried to stone the windows of my home. They too were accompanied by TV cameramen. What is the nature of the agreement...

It's been the received wisdom in language technology that machine translation isn't good enough. But all that's preventing it from being good enough is just a problem of scale. The way that machine translation is now being pushed forward simply involves being able to process more and more data in order to find the significant patterns. The power and cheapness of computers is increasing all the time. There's no way that the little problem of incompatibility between languages is going to stand in the way of it for long. And because it's being done in a data-based way, the techniques which will solve the problem will solve it for all languages, not just the big important ones. So even remote Aboriginal groups will benefit – maybe a generation later, maybe sooner. And when that happens, people will be able to fulfil themselves through their own language, which is what they always wanted to do anyway. Well, it's happening gradually. But I want to draw ...

When workers in a McDonald’s restaurant in Canton, Ohio, opened their paychecks this month, they found a pamphlet urging them to vote for the Republican candidates for governor, Senate and Congress, or possibly face financial repercussions. The pamphlet appeared calculated to intimidate workers into voting for Republican candidates by making a direct reference to their wages and benefits, said Allen Schulman, a Democrat who is president of the Canton City Council and said he obtained a copy of the pamphlet on Wednesday. The pamphlet said: “If the right people are elected, we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above the current levels. If others are elected, we will not.” It then named three Republican candidates after stating, “The following candidates are the ones we believe will help our business move forward.” Link: McDonald’s Workers Are Told Whom to Vote For - NYTimes.com

By JÜRGEN HABERMAS That we are experiencing a relapse into this ethnic understanding of our liberal constitution is bad enough. It doesn’t make things any better that today leitkultur is defined not by “German culture” but by religion. With an arrogant appropriation of Judaism — and an incredible disregard for the fate the Jews suffered in Germany — the apologists of the leitkultur now appeal to the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which distinguishes “us” from the foreigners. Nevertheless I do not have the impression that the appeals to the leitkultur signal anything more than a rearguard action or that the lapse of an author into the snares of the controversy over nature versus nurture has given enduring and widespread impetus to the more noxious mixture of xenophobia, racist feelings of superiority and social Darwinism. The problems of today have set off the reactions of yesterday — but not those of the day before. Link: Leadership and Leitkultur - NYTimes.com

IJZS - "Zizek on Wagner" Vol 4, No 0 (2010)

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma There was a time, not very long ago, when the humanities were under attack. Now they are just ignored. It is as if the case for 'job-oriented' education (to use a tasteless phrase that rules the journalistic writings on education these days) had been decisively and finally won. So long as someone was speaking against the humanities, a dialogue –howsoever worn-out and tattered– was at least alive, though not with any great kicking life. But a silence now reigns over the fate of the humanities.             It is a symptomatic silence. Symptomatic because it comes at a time when cultural commodities become most expensive and attract increasing investment under the shadow of speculation. As canny communicators and cool gurus swarm the cultural marketplace, it is nevertheless being proclaimed that an education in the humanities no longer pays.             Whi...

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma The open letter of Harcharan Bains, media adviser to the Chief Minister of Punjab, should be archived in the cultural studies departments of the world's universities. 1 It is such a model illustration of how ideology functions in these times.  If it is a calculated attempt to put the case of 'injured merit' (here the government's) before the 'discerning' readers of The Tribune , the calculation appears to have gone fatally wrong. As a signed statement that purports to answer a former minister's charges against the leadership of the principal ruling party and the CM and the Deputy CM, the letter merits serious scrutiny. But what a scrutiny reveals is that the answer does not really answer anything. The official media adviser has penned, actually, a personal letter. But then why give it wide public circulation?  The answer lies in the nature of the letter. It is a fine, indeed admirable, exercise in rhetoric. Bains exploits to ...

(S. Malhans's remarks appear below the post 'Book Review of Shikargah' here ) Dear S. Malhans, I take your observations with gratitude. You have obviously spent a good deal of time and care to comment on my short review. I will try to respond one by one to the points you have raised. My ideal reader is not a lazy person. I do not write for those who would expect me to "summarise" the text for them. Moreover, I do not see how a reviewer's summary can be treated as objective and hence relied on by a reader to arrive at a fair assessment of the review. I do not deny the uses of "structural logic" but I would like to be alert to its own logic. The search for structural logic may, in some cases, arise from a deeply insecure conservative impulse. Structural logic can function as the Great Secret Validator: to explain away and justify everything. Indeed I do not think that in the name of structural logic we can even condone a writer's poor han...

A novel in Punjabi by Surinder Neer Published by Chetna Parkashan, Ludhiana, 2010 Price: Rs. 300 By Rajesh Kumar Sharma Surinder Neer's maiden novel Shikargah shows she is a gifted story-teller. I choose the word 'gifted' to indicate her ability to tell her story engagingly and without straining herself. Besides, she has a profuse invention: she does not run out of absorbing situations and manages to sustain the reader's interest in most of them.  She has as much strength to dwell on sorrow and death as the sensibility to register the magic of everyday life. Dying and loneliness do not scare her, which is no small virtue in a writer in these days of profit-driven cultural production.             Romantic situations are not her forte: the conversations between lovers are generally stilted and unexciting, and the colours of passion are faint and borrowed. But she is at her best in handling encounters across the generations, ...

By Badri Raina The Supreme Court having dismissed a Special Leave Petition seeking deferment of the Allahabad High Court judgement which was slated to be delivered on the 24th of September, the decks have been cleared for the said judgement to be pronounced now at 3.30 afternoon tomorrow, the 30th of September, 2010. At the heart of the issue in court is a title suit to determine who is in rightful possession of the site where the demolished mosque stood—a Muslim organization or a Hindu one. Remarkably, after some sixty years of litigation in the matter, all parties to the dispute have welcomed the prospect of a legal determination regardless of who wins or loses, or whether the judgement-to-come confronts the parties with a mixed bag of determinations. But leaving the way open to all to go in appeal to the Supreme Court depending on how the chips fall. It is to be recalled that one justification preferred for the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 was that the courts were ...

By Badri Raina However you may cavil, We got the game, the game; However it may unravel, We have no shame, no shame. Only a hundred workers lost their lives, Only a footbridge fell; Only the beggars were put to the knives, Our hands remain in the till. The white man does not appreciate How well we negotiate Reality and bluster, Third world and first world state. Our metaphysics teaches us To look with benign eye On scoundrels and scalawags Who leave us high and dry. O India we assure you Your image shall not be dented; However the shit may hit the fan, Our glories shall be scented. Be not the anti-national wag, Sing praise to national pride; Whatever be the price to pay, We shall bring in the bride. And when we do the beggars will Be back where we know them; And they will so rejoice with us When we show them All the infrastructure we built While they were in quarantine; They will dance to national pride, They will say it is fine If they never have a belly full, Or a shanty in th...

The blog of James Bridle : literature, technology and book futurism, since 2006. booktwo.org | Literature + Technology

from TIME Seligman, in contrast, puts the emphasis on the remembering self. "I think we are our memories more than we are the sum total of our experiences," he says. For him, studying moment-to-moment experiences puts too much emphasis on transient pleasures and displeasures. Happiness goes deeper than that, he argues in his 2002 book Authentic Happiness . As a result of his research, he finds three components of happiness: pleasure ("the smiley-face piece"), engagement (the depth of involvement with one's family, work, romance and hobbies) and meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential, he insists: "This is newsworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure. It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important." Link: Science of Happiness: New Research on Mood, Satisfaction -- Printout -- TIME

Taylor is obviously right to say that university systems today, in this country and abroad, face an unprecedented crisis. Costs continue to spiral upwards even as revenue shrinks. Successive cohorts of graduate students move from the Ph.D. to the unemployment lines, or to the wilderness of adjuncting. While magnificent advances in knowledge continue to take place, many tenured professors produce little of real scholarly value. But it is one thing to say that universities have problems. It is another to argue, as Taylor is effectively arguing, that the universities are the problem—that the system that allegedly began with Kant (in fact it began much earlier) has reached the end of its intellectual and social usefulness, and needs to be swept away in favor of something radically new and untested, in accordance with technologies that are still evolving at breakneck speed. That is a reckless, wrong-headed idea, and it has no place in serious discussions of higher education’s...

Mary-Kay Wilmers from London Review of Books Papers speak through their writers. And of all the London Review ’s writers Frank Kermode was the one through whom we spoke most often and most eloquently. In all he wrote nearly 250 pieces for the LRB , the first in October 1979, a review of J.F.C. Harrison’s book on millenarianism, the last, in May this year, a review of Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ . ‘Eloquently’: was that the right word? Not really. Frank’s writing was so much more exact, more stylish, more patient, more ironic, more playful, more attentive, more cunning, more cagey than ‘eloquence’ can suggest. ‘Stealthy’ is another possibility – a word Michael Wood used in introducing the collection of Frank’s essays we published to mark his 90th birthday. But as I pile on the epithets I hear Frank’s voice in my head and I stop. Link: LRB · Mary-Kay Wilmers · Frank Kermode

Here is an urgent message from Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English, Ohio University, USA Dear Colleagues, Much is happening around the country right now to inflame hatred toward Muslims and Arabs. As one dear colleague noted today with understandable alarm, “I am deeply worried about the poisonous environment swirling around the Park51 initiative. Glen Beck and his ilk have given public permission to revile and attack Muslims and their institutions. Mosques are being burned, there is a threat to torch Qur'ans on 9/11, and individuals are being physically assaulted.” Further, those of us with origins in South Asia or the Middle East (Muslim or not) – that is, those of us who are perceived as Muslim or Arab based on our phenotype or our dress – are also beginning to catch the fire. As educators or as individuals otherwise concerned about civil rights and civil liberties, we need to be on the alert and be prepared to do whatever we can to speak up and to educate. At...

It wasn’t until recently that I was forced to reevaluate my stance on the e-book. While researching the negative effects of e-book sales on brick and mortar bookstores, I came across an essay by the science fiction author Charlie Stross. In the essay, “CMAP #5: Why Books are the Length they Are,” Stross lends his support to the e-book, stating that the success of the e-book may lead to a revival of non-novel formats, like novellas and serials, which have been floundering for some time. With this one simple statement, Stross brought me over to the dark side and showed me the brilliant light I’d been missing there all along. If the e-book can revive dead formats, it can also create new ones. We are now in a position wherein we can drastically redefine what counts as a book. As Stross says in his essay, the processes and costs of printing and binding usually dictate the lengths of books, and we have come to define books according to the very narrow specifications of publis...

‘W hen do I start?’ the war artist asked. The captain glanced at his watch, his thin lips pressed into a sliver. Thirty seconds passed. ‘Today,’ he said. From down the hallway a pistol shot rang out, followed by the sprightly pop of a champagne cork. ‘Right now, in fact.’ He handed the war artist a neatly folded uniform, saluted her, and walked out the door. Link: The War Artist | Online Only | Granta Magazine

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma A friend, who also is a teacher, recently sent an sms: satinder singh passed away this morning . Satinder Singh introduced me to the art of reading literature. He taught us to read patiently, to wait like birds even as reading hatched taking its own time. And he taught us to navigate literary works like wayfarers exploring the labyrinthine patterns of some Persian carpets. I remember the day -it must have been in 1980- I first went up to Satinder Singh. As always, he was there outside the classroom well before the class began. I had been reading a poem by Tennyson and had some questions. He heard me out and asked me to see him again the following day. 'Read this book over the weekend and come back to me,' he said, handing me The Complete Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson . I looked apprehensively at the forbidding tome but he reassured me, 'You'll read it through, I know.' And he smiled, patted my shoulder and walked into the class. ...

By Badri Raina From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://zcommunications.org/so-what-colour-is-terror-by-badri-raina /“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,/ /Stains the white radiance of Eternity.”/ (Shelley). I Shelley was never more wrong, but to that I shall return. Currently, one of the “burning issues” on media channels here in India is what colour we may ascribe or not ascribe to terror. A conundrum, if there ever was one. The matter has arisen from a comment made by the honourable Home Minister (read Minister of the Interior, incharge of “security” of the realm) to a conclave of senior law-enforcement officers on the state of alertness required of them in these troubled times. Detailing the many sources and forms of terror that now bedevil the even march of the country towards progress and “development,” he made a politic or impolitic “depending on who is listening” reference to a newer source of terror, ...

from The New York Times It has been a bumpy year for Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest book chain, with 720 stores. Sales and store traffic have suffered as the book business has shifted online; Amazon has held its early lead in the e-reader war; and early this month, Barnes & Noble put itself up for sale and is now in the midst of a battle for control of the company with Ronald W. Burkle, the billionaire investor. People browsing at the Lincoln Center store on Monday lamented the loss of one of the city’s largest and most prominent bookstores, a sprawling space with a cafe on the fourth floor and an enormous music selection. For devoted theatergoers, it was a reliable site for readings and events that focused on the performing arts. (Still on the fall schedule are appearances by Patti LuPone and Elaine Paige .) But many of those same people conceded that they have not bought as many books there as they did in the past. Some said they were more likely to ...

from The New York Times It is lunchtime at what may be the world’s largest free eatery, the langar, or community kitchen at this city’s glimmering Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. Everything is ready for the big rush. Thousands of volunteers have scrubbed the floors, chopped onions, shelled peas and peeled garlic. At least 40,000 metal plates, bowls and spoons have been washed, stacked and are ready to go. Anyone can eat for free here, and many, many people do. On a weekday, about 80,000 come. On weekends, almost twice as many people visit. Each visitor gets a wholesome vegetarian meal, served by volunteers who embody India’s religious and ethnic mosaic. Amritsar Journal - A Sikh Temple Where All May Eat, and Pitch In - NYTimes.com

As a scholar, Mr. Kermode sought to bring new ideas on literary theory into the classroom, helping introduce French theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault into British academia in the 1960s. He later distanced himself from some of their more arcane notions of literary interpretation but remained committed to academic freedom. He left his prestigious job at University College London in 1982 after an unsuccessful battle to achieve tenure for a younger colleague who advocated a structuralist view of literature and film. British literary critic Frank Kermode dies at age 90

The much talked about August 9 Time magazine cover, unabashed in its aim to shore up support for the war effort in Afghanistan, has left many still shaking their heads in disbelief at such brazen exploitation of a woman’s suffering. It’s not the first time the plight of Afghan women has been used to manipulate public opinion. It’s a narrative we have become so accustomed to since the 2001 invasion, that many of my most intelligent female friends did not recognize it for the subversive emotional blackmail that it is. More important, they said, was the attention it brought to women’s issues. Well, let us talk about those issues in earnest, then. The Face That Launched a Thousand Drones? | ShahidulNews

He was the most erudite man I've ever known, but he wore his learning lightly. And he had a way of alerting one to one's ignorance in the gentlest of ways. Once, for example, we were discussing a very eminent scientist whom we both knew and who had been the recipient of numerous honours and awards. I confidently, but mistakenly, asserted that the man in question was a Nobel laureate. "Oh, really," said Frank, "I hadn't known that." And I immediately realised the extent of my gaffe. But nothing was said, and the subject was never mentioned again. Frank Kermode | Tribute | John Naughton | Books | The Observer

Frank Kermode, who rose from humble origins to become one of England’s most respected and influential critics, died Tuesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 90. His death was announced by The London Review of Books, which he helped create and to which he frequently contributed. Frank Kermode, Literary Critic, Dies at 90 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Basil Davidson, path-breaking historian of Africa, dies at 95 » peoplesworld

from ShahidulNews They meander and glide. They unfurl with the rage of monsoon fury. Quietly they flow in the misty winter morn. Rivers thread the fabric of our land. Embroider patches of fertile delta. They are the nakshi kantha of our rural folklore. Life giver, destroyer, enchanter, they have inspired the greatest myths, formed the tapestry for the most endearing love songs. Our Bhatiali has been shaped by the lilt of the boatman’s lyrics drifting across the waves. Kabir Hossain homeward bound

By ISABEL KERSHNER From The New York Times JERUSALEM — Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities perpetrated by a few brutal women have always stood out, like aberrations of nature. There were notorious camp guards like Ilse Koch and Irma Grese. And lesser known killers like Erna Petri, the wife of an SS officer and a mother who was convicted of shooting to death six Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland; or Johanna Altvater Zelle, a German secretary accused of child murder in the Volodymyr-Volynskyy ghetto in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. The Nazi killing machine was undoubtedly a male-dominated affair. But according to new research, the participation of German women in the genocide, as perpetrators, accomplices or passive witnesses, was far greater than previously thought. The researcher, Wendy Lower, an American historian now living in Munich, has drawn attention to the number of seemingly ordinary German women who willingly went out to the Nazi-occupied eastern territories as pa...

Badri Raina (From Badri Raina's Znet Page) O Brave New India that hath such Creatures in it. I Clap clap, and clap again. India’s GDP is set to grow at 9.4%, sayeth the oracle of the World Bank. So, where is the high table, and why aren’t we on it yet? And what is a mere G-20; it is the permanent membership of the Round Table we seek and deserve. Our knights now shine too resplendentally, O Arthur-Sam. So, move over, you defunct old inheritors of defunct old glory. Our charge now resistless indeed. Which is perhaps why the evil ones conspire to stymie that charge with ill-intended facts and figures. Familiar colonial perfidy alive and well still, epicentred where else but in that decrepit Oxford. They now unleash another GDP to undermine our Icarian flight, namely, Gross Destitute People. Some busybody Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative brings out a Report on world poverty based on Multi-Dimensional I...