What was Of Grammatology about? When Madeleine, the heroine of Jeffrey Eugenides's campus novel The Marriage Plot, asks a young theory-head this question, she is immediately set straight: 'If it was "about" anything, then it was about the need to stop thinking of books as being about things.' That's not so far off. In all three books, Derrida's argument was that Western thought from Plato to Rousseau to Lévi-Strauss had been hopelessly entangled in the illusion that language might provide us with access to a reality beyond language, beyond metaphor: an unmediated experience of truth and being which he called 'presence'.
—
Not in the Mood by Adam Shatz is an essay in The London Review of Books about a
new biography of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The review does a good job of explaining Derrida's theories in simple language and putting it in the context of his life, from his childhood as French Jew in Vichy-controlled Algeria to his later years as a globetrotting academic star. For a complimentary perspective on Derrida, you can do worse than starting
with these thoughts on his relevance for historians and progressives.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 14, 2012 -
36 comments
Perry Anderson's book length three part series on the history of India from
the beginnings of its independence movement,
through independence and partition into
its recent history as a nation-state is the latest in a series of erudite, opinionated and wordy articles in The London Review of Books by the UCLA professor of history and sociology on the modern history of various countries, so far taking in Brazil, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, the EU, Russia, Taiwan and France.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 25, 2012 -
6 comments
Back in Town is a song by
Izia, a French rock band fronted by and named for Izïa Higelin. Even though she comes from a showbiz family, the band initially found little favor on French radio. But after a string of
blistering live performances all over France, the self-titled first album became a hit and won a couple of awards at the prestigious Victoire de la Musique ceremony, where Izia performed the song
Let Me Alone. There are a bunch of live performances online, including of
Life is Going Down, a cover of AC/DC's
Touch Too Much and a
duet with Iggy Pop. This past November, sophomore album So Much Trouble was released, featuring such songs as the
title track,
On Top of the World, and my favorite,
Baby.
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 16, 2011 -
9 comments
Hanover Historical Texts Project is a collection of primary source texts from ancient times to the modern era in English translation. There is a great number of interesting texts, for instance accounts of
Zeno, he of the paradoxes,
the diary of Lady Sarashina, a lady-in-waiting in Heian era Japan,
a letter from Count Stephen of Blois and Chartres, a crusader writing to his wife,
Arthur Young's travels in France before and during the Revolution,
a report by the American ambassador in St. Petersburg on March 20th, 1917, immediately after the February Revolution, and finally
Petrarch's letter about his graphomania. That last one is from what is perhaps my favorite part of the website, a trove of
Petrarch's Familiar Letters. But there's much more in the Hanover Historical Texts Projects besides what I've mentioned.
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 24, 2011 -
6 comments
Journeyman Pictures has uploaded nearly 4000 videos to YouTube. Many of these are trailers for the documentaries they sell, but they have also posted hundreds of full-length videos. Most are for short documentarie, but there are a lot of features too. It's somewhat daunting to explore, but the
playlists are a good place to start, and so are the shows:
Features,
Shorts,
News and
Savouring Europe, a European travelogue series. Here's a few interesting ones:
Gastronauts, about French culinary students working to make astronaut food more palatable,
Demon Drummers, about student Kodo drummers,
India's Free Lunch, about the effects of free school lunches on Indian society,
The Twitter Revolution, about YouTube and Twitter's role in the 2009 Iranian uprising,
Europe's Black Hole, about Transnistria, the breakaway region of Moldova,
Small Town Boy, about a gay male carnival queen in a small town in England,
The Vertigo of Lists, Umberto Eco talks about the ubiquity of lists in modern culture and
Monsters from the Id, about scientists in the science fiction films of the Fifties.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 24, 2010 -
10 comments
Around the time of the flooding in Troyes a plant in the south-east of Paris which supplied compressed air to the owners of ‘pneumatique’ equipment – lifts, ventilation, industrial machinery – was submerged. Parisians were fond of compressed-air technology. It was how the postal service delivered mail from one office to another in small brass shuttles propelled along a network of tubes. It was also used to keep the clocks ticking on the streets of the city and, by subscription, in private apartments. When the plant went underwater during the night, pneumatic time stopped dead.
Pavements Like Jelly is an article by Jeremy Harding describing the 1910 Great Flood of Paris which started 100 years ago today.
Photo exhibition with 1300 photographs focusing on Paris.
Even more photos, taking in the entire Seine. Both sites are Flash heavy, for a smaller selection of non-Flash pictures go
here and
here.
[1910 Paris Flood previously on MetaFilter]
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 21, 2010 -
14 comments
Norman Centuries is a new podcast by Lars Brownworth, best known for his podcast series
12 Byzantine Rulers (
previously). Norman Centuries, as the name suggests, recounts the history of the Normans, those literal vikings who gained Normandy and then England, Sicily, Malta, Antioch and, well, a whole heck of a lot of other places too. They were a conquering bunch. First two episodes are out with more to follow.
[iTunes link]
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 15, 2009 -
18 comments
The Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration has drawings of uniforms and regimental regalia from all over the world. Assembled by one of these great, eccentric collectors of the late 19th Century, Dr. H. J. Vinkhuijzen, a Dutch medical doctor who started out as an army physician and eventually rose to the position of official court physician to Prince Alexander of Netherlands. He pulled plates out of books, colored in black and white drawings and painted his own watercolor illustrations. His collection includes pictures of the soldiers of
many different nations and eras, from military superpowers like the
Roman Empire,
France and
Great Britain, to lesser known, but no less formidable forces, like
Byzantium and
Persia and even taking in such minnows as
Luxembourg,
Monaco and Montenegro. Due to Vinkhuijzen's unusual classification system it can be hard to find some of the more interesting images, such as pictures of
Etruscan cavalry,
Spanish military musicians and
1830's Belgian ambulance.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 4, 2008 -
11 comments
