Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Rushkoff at WebVisions 2011 Jousting the Hegemon

WebVisions was over a month ago, but Rushkoff's talk is still apropos. Critical theorists out there you'll note the fellow traveler in Rushkoff's rant. You'll also note that he missteps in thinking that there can exist an easily identifiable counter-hegemony, one that he (critical theorist that he is) can "see" completely. Envision the fatal flaw of my beloved critical theory paradigm here, but swoon anyway.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Gary Snyder and "text"

On a more useful notion of text for these times:


“One of the formal criteria of humanistic scholarship is that it be concerned with the scrutiny of texts. A text is information stored through time. The stratigraphy of rocks, layers of pollen in a swamp, the outward expanding circles in the trunk of a tree, can be seen as texts. The calligraphy of rivers winding back and forth over the land leaving layer upon layer of traces of previous riverbeds is text.” (p. 71)


Snyder, G. (2003). The practice of the wild: Essays. Washington, DC: Shoemaker & Hoard.