paradigm shift in contemporary critical theory

 …a with this much Walter Benjamin, a dead cert the contrary (digital) flâneuse (irony noted) would pick it. What else can I say? Shift happens. Omnivore is always a treat.

....From critical theory to psychological warfare — how Franwithkfurt School intellectuals fought the Nazi enemy: Ulrich Plass reviews Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort by Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer (ed. Raffaele Laudani).

Craig Shrimpton (Goldsmiths): Fascism in Benjamin's Historical Materialism: Crisis and the Aestheticisation of Politics. Joel White reviews Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy by Andrew Benjamin. Fallen angel: Ian Penman on the tragic life and enduring influence of critic Walter Benjamin. From TNR’s series “Book that changed my mind”, Stephanie LaCava: “Walter Benjamin was my first crush”.

Barbarism: Anna-Verena Nosthoff on notes on the thought of Theodor W. Adorno.

read the rest at paradigm shift in contemporary critical theory - bookforum.com / omnivore

Make the most of limited city living space: House in a Box

Two hundred square feet. Appallingly small, even by NYC standards. But a new project from MIT Media Lab’s Changing Places group, promises to transform that into one that is like an apartment three times the size to live in

CityHome is essentially a hideaway bed taken to the umpteenth level. It’s a mechanical box about the size of a closet that sits inside an apartment, where it stows a bed, dining room table, kitchen surface, a cooking range, a closet, and multipurpose storage, too.

MIT's CityHome Is A House In A Box You Control By Waving Your Hand | Co.Design | business design: 

Everlasting Realities of the Bohemian Lifestyle

…or the creative #precariat & the #city, by extension #citymooc. Academic knowledge workers, particularly in the arts and humanities, are explicitly noted as those who, "began adult life as artists and intellectuals only to find themselves 25 years on somehow being mainly a teacher at a D-list college in a place they never wanted to live." Sounds like a Balzac novel, doesn't it? Illusions perdues, in particular, comes to mind. 

NEW YORK -- Is it still possible to be a bohemian in today's New York City, where average rents now surpass $3,000 a month? Or are the rents just too damn high? And -- if they are -- what does this mean for the future of artists and intellectuals of the sort who have long been as much a part of the natural order of the city as pigeons and locust trees?
These are some of the questions provoked by an article in the Spring issue of N+1 magazine on "Cultural Revolution" signed by "The Editors." 

...fast forward to the closing paragraphs...

[Bohmeian] complaints [in n+1 article ]are far larger than one about the New York housing market, or the academy, as well -- they are about the relation of the intellectual and the artist to society, about the lack of recognition except by "the Happy Few." But the art and literary worlds have always been a total crap shoot, and far too many artists and writers reach old age as impoverished and unknown as when they began. There is nothing new in the failure of that dare. Even those who have one wonderful glorious moment of fame and fortune are rarely set, because a moment is not a life, and life is longer than most forms of renown these days. 

T.S. Eliot worked as a banker. Wallace Stevens was an insurance company vice president. There are others who have carved memorable careers out of evenings and weekends. But there have always been more who began adult life as artists and intellectuals only to find themselves 25 years on somehow being mainly a teacher at a D-list college in a place they never wanted to live. 

I'm not saying any of this is good, only that it is hardly new.

Read the complete article at Everlasting Realities of the Bohemian Lifestyle - Garance Franke-Ruta - The Atlantic

virtual flânerie chez MOOC

…late in the day or game of my life ~ figuratively speaking, but this flâneuse persona is off on another city jaunt...virtual flânerie in the form of MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses about cities.

The first, nearly over, is Technicity, and the other, in development and yet to start, is City MOOC.

Borges, Paradox & Perception

…+ Heisenberg = irresistible. This was sitting in drafts, earmarked for #introphil, the philosophy course, now over, and the others left abandoned by the wayside. It's time for flâneuse to leave philosophy classes behind and move on. Topically speaking, we're city bound, heading home to the streets. MOOCs have discovered their cousin, the city, no stranger to paradox or uncertainty. More later. For now, let's transition with Cities, MOOCs, Global Networks by Kris Olds, Inside HigherEd.

In 1927 a young German physicist published a paper that would turn the scientific world on its head. Until that time, classical physics had assumed that when a particle’s position and velocity were known, its future trajectory could be calculated. Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that this condition was actually impossible:

Open Letter from SJSU Philosophy Dept to Michael Sandel

painting by Gandolfi Gaetano

…for more (if not optimum) context, read comments and related article. Optimum context would involve taking the edX course in question, reading up on MOOCs, Sandel, edX. the MOOCing  of HigherEd in general and, in particular, the Gates Foundation driven agreement between San Jose and edX. All that still might not be enough but brings us closer to an informed opinion. Even then there will be more variants and questions than consensus. 

Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University wrote the following letter to make a direct appeal to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor whose MOOC on "Justice" they were being encouraged to use as part of the San Jose State curriculum. (See related article and comments)

Is this philosophy or just more mooc madness?  If philosophy is truly about knowledge, how we know and ways of knowing of the world. Consider this comment in the letter, 

.. the thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary - something out of a dystopian novel.

Physicists Debate Nothingness

…damn, this sounds like it belongs with #Introphil, despite presenter Krauss' distaste for both religion and philosophy…it even gets into existence, time travel, the multiverse, quantum theory…Being and Nothingness…

What is nothing? Sounds like a simple question—nothing is simply the absence of something, of course—until you begin to think about it. The other night the American Museum of Natural History hosted its 14^th annual Asimov Memorial Debate, which featured five leading thinkers opining (and sparring, sometimes testily, but more on that later) about the nature of nothing. 

“Nothing is the most important part of the universe,” said Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University and author of the recent “A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing.” 

Read the rest at Physicists Debate the Many Varieties of Nothingness | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network

learning time, spinning heads

or learning & time travel? Can I shoehorn this into an #introphil post? Tangle a few roots? Time, mind, post/transhuman (or was that another course?), learning, and identity too, for good measure.  Who am I? is the QUESTION standing behind the examined life's green curtain, flowing into What do I know and How do I know it? 

At Building Creative Bridges, Paul Signorelli, blogging #etmooc writes,

We may be identifying yet another digital literacy skill: an ability to function simultaneously within a variety of timeframes we don’t normally consider while we’re learning. 

Before we take the leap into a bit of virtual time travel to pursue this idea, let’s ground ourselves within a familiar idea: much of the formal learning with which we’re familiar takes place within clearly-defined segments of time, e.g., an hour-long workshop or webinar, or a course that extends over a day, week, month, or semester. We work synchronously during face-to-face or online interactions, and we work asynchronously through postings that extend a conversation as long as the formal learning opportunity is underway and participants are willingly engaged.

Disclaimer: I still haven't written that digital identity reflection for Bonnie Stewart's Change 11 unit last year. However, I do think about (wrestle with) it regularly. This still isn't it but may be approaching calculus not algebra. So back to courses and their timespace boundaries: in open, online course ~ more specifically, MOOCs like #introphil and #etmooc ~ 

this connectivist learning process is far from linear—rhizomaticis one of the terms we’ve been using extensively throughout the [#etmooc] course. We are also seeing that our learning process does not have to be limited to exchanges with learners and others who are participating within the formal linear timeframe suggested by a course 

Both MOOCs and philosophy partake of, occupy themselves with time, space and unspace (if we can designate virtual space as such). A science article that caught my attention, comparing differences in perceiving past and future time, seems relevant to temporal discussion in either (philosophy's time travel paradox vs digital ed's sync/async) camp.

Learning Time and Heads That Spin | Building Creative Bridges

A Darwin-Sartre connection: absurd or what?

…#introphil…although I'm not sure quite where (or even whether) this fits in the Introduction to Philosophy. My call: skepticism and the nature of reality. Being absurd does not make reality less real...or more. Truth? Don't even go there. Yet.

Resistance appeals to me. Camus (mentioned), not Sartre, has always been a favorite. I won't claim to be exploring essay topics, but that could be what my unconscious is up to. That or making sense of philosophy-by-mooc. Could I write 750 words on why I keep taking philosophy courses when I really prefer history? Ethics and applications (pragmatism?) are considerations. I'm trying to decide whether or not to take Michael Sandel's Justice EdX mooc. Haven't done (or whatever verb) an edX yet and am uncomfortable with a "true believer" intensity prevalent among Coursera followers. Brand and superprof loyalty sometimes approaches that of swooning bobby-soxers, 

A few weeks ago we linked to an article connecting Sartre’s insights about “authenticity” with recent work in cognitive science. This week, in an essay at the Chronicle of Higher Education, David P. Barash pursues a similar thread connecting existentialism and evolutionary biology, one he thinks shows that “science has not completely destroyed our understanding of free will" .... Barash points out that both evolutionists and “existentialists” from Pascal to Heidegger all see the universe in its sheer indifferent vastness as in some sense “absurd” from the human perspective....then asserts the “uniquely human potential to resist our own genes,” and makes the further claim that it’s exactly this ability that constitutes our humanity, thus making “rebellion” practically a duty. To Barash, that sounds unmistakably like Albert Camus’ “reconfiguring” of Descartes: “I rebel, therefore we exist.”

Plus more philosophy links, mostly from more or less main stream popular media, surely a sign of something.

• At Slate, an article on the challenges of teaching computers what truth means.
• See what David Chalmers has been up to lately at his blog, Fragments of Consciousness.
• At The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier defends Thomas Nagel.
• At 3AM, Colin McGinn interviewed.
• Can’t get enough of experimental philosophy? This Friday at N.Y.U., experience X-Phi in 3-D.
• At Huffington Post, what happens when a philosopher watches too much reality TV. 

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless. The Stone’s weekly briefing of notable philosophy-related issues and ideas from around the Web.

The Stone Philosophy Links, March 13, 2013 - NYTimes.com

information graphics, diagrams, flowcharts, mind maps etc

…which relate to #introphil how? Surely logic cannot be irrelevant (especially not to thinking, knowledge and questions, all central to Introduction to Philosophy. OK I admit it: the real reason is that this graphic reminded me of a recent comment exchange/conversation with @Gordon_L about mind maps and the Wordle image I created for my last #introphil post. This is a flow chart because of a) that reminder and b) I couldn't find one about mind maps. There may not be a mind map humor category although some can be amusing, if not intentionally so. The same could be said of some philosophical arguments. Could the model below adapt to a Gettier Case?

#introphil: Into Week 2 but still stuck in Week 1

Behind on blogging, I resort to meatball textual analysis: a Wordle of the Week 1 transcript. Note that thinking and questions rank much higher than answers or even meaning. Encouraging...

thoughts on starting #introphil

…in no particular order, counting #introphil, I am now in…four MOOCs! (not counting CM11 or POTcert):  #etmooc, EDC and #mmooc13, five counting soon to start Complexity from Santa Fe Institute. Whatever was I thinking? Nice to "see" Gordon and Jaap. A number of familiar names/avatars from Fantasy SF course (later morphing into an active post-course book club) are there too although few blog and have yet to see signs of any on my rare Forum visits.  I wonder who else I know from online will be there? Most of the usual connectivist MOOC bunch sticks to "about pedagogy and elearning" courses.  

Best #CityReads of the Week

…The Atlantic Cities' weekly roundup by Sommer Mathis of the most intriguing articles about cities and urbanism we've come across in the past seven days. Share your favorites on Twitter with #cityreads.

"In the Traffic of Cairo's DIY Highway Exit, an Urbanist Movement Grows," Joseph Dana, Next American City

City, Empire, Church, Nation

…by Pierre Manent, City Journal Summer 2012. Is modernity a condition, a place along the way, a destination ever disappearing into the horizon as we approach? Unapproachable. Aleph or illusion. Ever the city at the center...

We have been modern for several centuries now. We are modern, and we want to be modern; it is a desire that guides the entire life of Western societies. That the will to be modern has been in force for centuries, though, suggests that we have not succeeded in being truly modern—that the end of the process that we thought we saw coming at various moments has always proved illusory, and that 1789, 1917, 1968, and 1989 were only disappointing steps along a road leading who knows where.... 

Modernity is characterized by movement, a movement that never reaches its end or comes to rest....The movement of the West began with the movement of the Greek city....To be more precise, Western movement began with internal and external movements of the Greek city—that is, with class struggle and foreign war. Cities were the ordering of human life that brought to light the domain of the common, the government of what was common, and the implementation of the common. The Greek city was the first complete implementation of human action, the ordering of the human world that made action possible and meaningful, the place where men for the first time deliberated and formulated projects of action. It was there that men discovered that they could govern themselves and that they learned to do it. The Greek city was the first form of human life to produce political energy—a deployment of human energy of a new intensity and quality. It was finally consumed by its own energy in the catastrophe of the Peloponnesian War.

Subsequent Western history was, on the whole, an ever-renewed search for a political form that would recover the energies of the city while escaping the fate of the city—the city that is free but destined to internal and external enmity. 

So what would the Greek peripatetic be the original flâneur? Read the rest at City, Empire, Church, Nation by Pierre Manent, City Journal Summer 2012

The NYPD Shut Down a Stoop Sale

…so how do you have a yard sale without a yard, a garage sale without a garage? 

Over the weekend, a stoop sale in Park Slope that was composed of some clothes, dishes, a bike, and a floor lamp was shut down by the police. The seller, a commenter on the message board Brooklynian, said that two police officers parked their car and plainly said, "You can't do this here." They then proceeded to ask whether or not he or she had a license.

The license, in that case, most likely meant a Secondhand Dealer General License, ... needed by "a person or business that buys or sells secondhand articles in New York City." Exempt from that, however, are garage sales, used boat dealers, not-for-profits, and curiously, used clothing stores. 

Here are a few points to consider, if we're going to have this debate: Most New Yorkers don't have a front lawn to host a garage sale, if we're going to have this debate: Most New Yorkers don't have a front lawn to host a garage sale, but that doesn't automatically mean the word "stoop" is a legitimate substitute. 

A rent-paying resident doesn't own his stoop... but even though they're occasionally kind of annoying to the rest of a building's tenants, stoop sales (much like sample sales are naturally occurring phenomena that most city dwellers—particularly Brooklyn residents—have come to accept and enjoy.

 Read the rest at The NYPD Shut Down a Park Slope Stoop Sale - Controversies - Racked NY 

Kabbalah on Book Drum, 13 Aug 2012

…reposting this puppy as received & beating the drum for Book Drum as a site for book flâneurs to bookmark. No mystery to it. If this is not to your tastes, there are plenty more on the site.

Kabbalah is a system of knowledge that originated in Jewish thought, and uses stories of the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) as metaphors to explain its teachings. It seeks to unlock the mysteries of the universe, explain the relationship between the creator and creation, and to explain the nature of human beings and the purpose of existence. Its teachings are meant to help people attain spiritual realisation and well-being. Its teachings are not part of traditional Jewish scripture, and it is not a denomination of Judaism, though some denominations do use it heavily.

Kabbalah has enjoyed a huge rise in popularity in recent years. Here is what 'The Kabbalah Centre' website says about the ancient wisdom:

"Approximately 4,000 years ago, a set of spiritual principles was communicated to humanity in a moment of divine revelation. These ancient revelations unlock all the mysteries of humanity; the secret code that governs the universe. It's the grand unified theory pursued by Einstein. It's an incredible system of logic and a phenomenal technology that can alter the way you view your life. It is the oldest sacred document in existence, filled with wisdom. This extraordinary, powerful set of tools is known as Kabbalah—the original instruction manual for life."

Kabbalah - Tree of Life - Image Credit: Alan James Garner/wikimedia commons

 
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Carte du Jour: Brain Pickings

…The wandering one couldn't decide which to post so settles for most of the week's as usual smashing newsletter, somewhat but not excessively trimmed. Still wondering why you haven't subscribed yet...don't count room service being a habit here when the internet is one big buffet...

An extraordinary love letter from Balzac, Susan Sontag on the commodification of wisdom, humanistic hope for the present from 1930, and more. Looking crappy? View here  If you missed last week's edition – Carl Sagan's reading list, Francis Bacon on studies, Vita Sackville-West's love letter to Virginia Woolf, and more – you can catch up right here.  Green Card Stories: A Visual Catalog of Immigrants' Triumphs and Tribulations Poignant portrait of a system caught between hope and despair. Having spent a good portion of my adult life wrangling the nine circles of my very own immigration hell, I feel a profound personal investment in the immigration debates that have swelled to particularly prodigious proportions around this year's election. Green Card Stories (public library) tells the heartening, and often dramatic, tales of fifty immigrants who recently attained their American residency or citizenship, accompanied by powerful profiles by journalist Saundra Amrhein and evocative portraits by documentary photographer Ariana Lindquist.

Credit Alchemy!

… or the Alchemical Roots of the Financial Revolution. Not just alike in opacity and aim (gold from base material whether metal or sweat), credit and alchemy are  more connected historically, than you might imagine. 

When the philosopher Baruch de Spinoza received word of a successful transmutation of lead into gold in December of 1666, he quickly sought to quell his skepticism by personally visiting the adept, and the visit left him fully convinced of the veracity of the adept’s account.

How to Think

…advice from Chris Hedges that many need but few recognize. That includes education systems, most ed theory wonks working for Foundations and government agencies…indeed society itself,

Cultures that endure carve out a protected space for those who question and challenge national myths. Artists, writers, poets, activists, journalists, philosophers, dancers, musicians, actors, directors and renegades must be tolerated if a culture is to be pulled back from disaster

Chris Hedges: How to Think - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

We Built This City

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, by David Harvey, Verso, 206 pp. Reviewed in Berfrois by Jonathon Moses. Image below: 1871 Paris Commune.

It would be impossible to cover here the range of ideas in Harvey’s recent book, Rebel Cities, but it is worth considering one of its key themes: how might the city, rather than the workplace, be the key site of anti-capitalist struggle?

The Urban Proletariat

In prioritising the site of production and the industrial proletariat as the revolutionary class, traditional Marxism created a number of problems. To begin with, it excluded all those who did not, or could not work from possessing any kind of agency – with the result that the struggles of domestic labourers (women), the unemployed, the disabled were largely ignored. It also left us blind to other forms of value creation outside of the sphere of ‘work’, or indeed forms of exploitation centred not around production but consumption....For Harvey, it is the city which offers a way out – since everyone who lives in the city creates the city but only a minority take ownership of the value that is created. 

Read the rest of We Built This City by Jonathan Moses, originally published at Open Democracy |. See also, David Harvey essay, "The Right to the City" in New Left Review.