I’ve not been able to track down the source, but somewhere Marshall McLuhan wrote, “Publication is a self-invasion of privacy. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.” The unfolding NSA scandal has brought privacy front and center. A great deal is being written right now about the ideal … Continue reading Perspectives on Privacy and Human Flourishing
What is authenticity? It is the holy grail of modern life. Why? Some thoughts. Take One … Because modernity is one long identity crisis. In traditional societies, identity was given. It was grounded in the relative solidity of pre-modern life. Individuals inhabited an identity that was given by time, place, the structures and institutions of … Continue reading Ramblings Regarding Authenticity and Identity in an Age of Performance
Marcell Jousse was a pioneering scholar of gesture and orality. He was a younger contemporary and student of Marcel Mauss. During the inter-war years, he published a series of seminal studies on orality and gesture that garnered wide spread recognition. The publication of his first book in 1925, The Rhythmic and Mnemotechnical Oral Style of the … Continue reading Marcel Jousse: Forgotten Pioneer of Media Studies
Ivan Illich’s In the Vineyard of the Text is an exploration of the evolution of reading and the book in Western Europe during the 13th century. It is focused on Hugh of St. Victor and a well-known work of his titled the Didascalicon, essentially the first guide to the art of reading. Illich notes, “Before … Continue reading Oral Social Literacy, Past and Present
Last summer I posted a few thoughts on Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War which I had then begun reading. As it turned out, I set the book aside for a few months for no particular reason, but I’ve recently returned to it and finished it. I stand by my initial characterization: the … Continue reading “I Was Born To Stand Outside Myself”
L.M. Sacasas 