Bbenzon
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 6405 )
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A Useful Metaphor: 1000 Lights on a String, and a Handful Are Busted
Many years ago, probably back in my graduate school days, I came up with a rather awkward metaphor/analogy for thinking about intellectual progress in things... Read more
Posted on 26 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Insular is Literary Criticism?
One reason I became a literary critic is that the discipline seemed like a good arena for intellectual synthesis. Moreover, I had the example of Richard... Read more
Posted on 25 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Survivalism Among the Super-rich, the 1% of the 1%, and They're Running Scared
The New Yorker has a fascinating article on survivalism among the super-rich. They're making preparations for the time when society collapses and it's everyone... Read more
Posted on 24 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sometimes David Brooks Makes Sense: After the Women's March
From today's NYTimes: In the first place, this movement focuses on the wrong issues. Of course, many marchers came with broad anti-Trump agendas, but they were... Read more
Posted on 24 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Derrida and Writerly Criticism
For some time now I’ve been arguing that academic literary criticism is (often) intrinsically free of diagrams, tables, graphs, and so forth, rather than... Read more
Posted on 24 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rejected @NLH! Part 4: Déjà Vu All Over Again at New Literary History
I’ve been discussing a manuscript of my that was rejected at New Literary History: Sharing Experience: Computation, Form, and Meaning in the Work of... Read more
Posted on 23 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fictionality as an Intelligible and Stable Category of Discourse
Andrew Piper, in Journal of cultural Analytics: This article makes a very different claim, one that is based on observing a great deal of instances in which... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Trees of Longwood Gardens, December 25, 2016
Posted on 20 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rejected @NLH! Part 3: Party Like It’s 1975
This is the heart of the story because it is during the 1970s when who knows? the discipline of academic literary criticism might have gone another way. But it... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What? The Humanities Center WON'T Be Closed!
What? The Humanities Center, NOT closed? I didn't even know it had been threatened with closure. The Humanities Center in question is, of course, the one at... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump and the End of the Administrative State
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henniger asks the question of the decade, "Will the Trump presidency produce order or merely more disorder? Read more
Posted on 19 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Kittens, Flickr Commons, Library of Congress
Fond this photo on Flickr (H/t John Holbo): Here's the caption The Library of Congress supplied: Happy 9th Birthday, Flickr Commons! Read more
Posted on 17 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Do I Want to See La La Land?
The movie's been getting a lot of press. And I certainly have taken pleasure in movie musicals. So I've been wondering whether or not I want to see this one. Read more
Posted on 16 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rejected @NLH! Part 2: What I Got out of Writing the Article
So, I ended the previous episode of Rejected @NLH! circling the periphery the discipline, thinking about sending an article in over the transom. Read more
Posted on 14 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Renaissance Man", the Learned and Practical Traditions, and Crossing Social...
This article, alas, behind a paywall, looks interesting and important. J. V. Field, The Unhelpful Notion of ‘Renaissance man’, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
You Can Build Your Own Fallout Shelter
Every now and then I'll talk about growing up in the 1950s and how I even thought about just where to place the family fallout shelter. Read more
Posted on 13 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“Anchor” – Another Term in the Study of Cultural Evolution
Some time ago I decided to drop “meme” as a term for the genetic element in cultural evolutionary processes. 1) It has too much baggage attached to it. 2) The... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Tree, Longwood Gardens, December 25, 2016
Two weeks ago it was white flowers from Longwood Gardens. Last week it was colored flowers. This week it's greenery. Read more
Posted on 13 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Generative Grammar Moving to the “we Knew It All Along” Phase?
As you may know, for the last few years the linguistics world has been transfixed by a cage match between Daniel “The Pirahã Whisperer” Everett and Noam... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Metaphor Deeper Than Mere Metaphor
Came across this old post when I went looking for the Thoreau quote, which is about steam engines, and thought I'd bump it to the top of the queue. It's about... Read more
Posted on 12 January 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY