Bbenzon
Description
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
-
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 ( 7808 )
-
Singapore: The Future of Language?
Andrew Batson writes: Rather than being pure denizens of one linguistic world, Singaporeans reside, occasionally uncomfortably, in two. Read more
Posted on 03 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism, Extra: A Graduate Syllabus in...
I'd originally posted this at The Valve in July of 2007 under a the title: The Autonomous Aesthetic: A Graduate Syllabus in Literary Theory. Read more
Posted on 03 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Notes on Narcos and Reality
I’ve been watching the new Netflix stream-a-thon, Narcos, about Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel. In that it involves the cocaine trade it is like... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 5: It’s Time to Leave the Sandbox
The child is father to the man. – William Wordsworth Despite the wide range of literary study that has taken place under the rubric of the newer psychologies –... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Signifiers, the Material Text, and the Digital Critic
Why do I find digital criticism so congenial? It’s true that I studied computational linguistics early in my year and developed a computational semantics model... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 4: The ‘Middle Way’, What It Can and...
Literature is not made out of consciousness, it’s made out of words. – J. Hillis Miller No scholar should find humiliating the task of description. This is, on... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neural Structures Involved in Reading Fiction to Understand Actions Vs. Minds
Nijhof AD, Willems RM (2015) Simulating Fiction: Individual Differences in Literature Comprehension Revealed with fMRI. PLoS ONE 10(2): e0116492.... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Crucifix Caravan
Madam Wayquay's museum for the preservation and restoration of spirits lost in space just got a shipment of religious items, including a variety of crucifixes. Read more
Posted on 28 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
J. Hillis Miller on the Profession: “Literature is … Made out of Words”
Another working paper. Title above, information below. Download fron Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 3: The Key to the Treasure IS the (form of...
As I was planning this series of posts I thought I’d follow my personal history by returning to the standard-issue cognitivism in Richardson’s essay-review and... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
RESET on Coates, Reparations, Wisdom
Over at Crooked Timber thehersch suggests a reading of Coates on reparations that hadn’t quite occurred to me. The reading is of this line: More important than... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Frankenstein, It Seems, Was Born in a Volcano
In today's NYTimes: In April 1815, the most powerful volcanic blast ]Mt. Tambora in Indonesia] in recorded history shook the planet in a catastrophe so vast tha... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 2: What I Learned When I Walked off the...
In the first post in this series I took a look at an essay-review Alan Richardson wrote about two recent books in literary cognitivism and asserted, in effect,... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A White Blackman @ 3QD
Nothing is more deeply American that white folks listening to, absorbing, learning, and then performing black music. I've published a bit of my own enactment... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Cognitivism 1: Alan Richardson Makes a Case
I’m pretty sure that Richardson would be somewhere between puzzled and shocked at the idea that he believes literary cognitivism to be an impoverished... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vicarious Experience, Or How to Think Biologically About Literature
A couple of years ago I reviewed William Flesch, Comeuppance, for Twentieth Century Literature. I've now put that review online at Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's Time to Create New Adulthoods for the New Worlds Now Emerging
Recently the NYTimes published an article on wage-slavery in the white collar ranks of Amazon.com. Many of us reacted in horror at what we read. Read more
Posted on 21 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Secularization Has All but Won, Even in the Islamic World
Oliver Roy has a fascinating article, The disconnect between religion and culture, in Eurosone. There are many different ways to define secularization. Read more
Posted on 21 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why IS Animal Culture So Thin, Or, When & How Did We Learn to Practice?
If by culture we mean learned behavior that is passed down from one generation to the next, then, certainly, animal culture exists. But why is it so thin? Why i... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coates, Baldwin, Obama and Expressive Culture 2
My previous post in this series didn’t go quite where I wanted it to go. Scratch that, as I didn’t really know where I was going – which happens a lot and is a... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
