The Rhine River

Random Notes

Le Figaro describes the debate among Lacan's old seminar students over the publication of his lectures. (Googl-English)

Natalie looks at how ancient philosophers looked at slavery:

Bernard Williams, in Shame and Necessity, says that the ancient Greeks - here talking primarily of the Classical period - did not generally attempt to morally justify slavery.

Here is something interesting: the use of felony disenfranchisement in racial politics:

Mississippi’s 1890 constitutional convention was among the first to use felon disenfranchisement laws against African Americans. Until then, Mississippi law disenfranchised those guilty of any crime. In 1890, however, the law was narrowed to exclude only those convicted of certain offenses – crimes of which African Americans were more often convicted than whites.

Bridget looks at the role of intellectuals in American life.

... Once again we have a continuity/discontinuity argument. Pells traces continuity between pre-war leftist intellectual thought and the post-war acceptance of the Cold War, yet the bomb and other consequences of the war loom large in influencing this shift to a Conservative age and the tempering of radical thought. Do you see continuity or discontinuity? Do we have anything else to compare this intellectual shift to? ...

Joel looks at Grant's "frontier formation."

While I am on the subject of frontiers, the online journal EspacesTemps has an excellent article that attempts to resituate frontier theory with regard to globalization. The authors argue that boundaries are not being demolished as much as being resituated and redefined.

"Frontier realities appear elsewhere, in other forms, but always in places invested with a strong capacity of social and political structuring."

posted by Nathanael @ 9:59 AM