It’s impossible to fail utterly. Years ago, before they were usual practice, a colleague and I organised a postgraduate recruitment open day for our department. It was a great innovation, with a substantial turnout of staff. The five or so potential applicants who appeared included a boy still at school, a couple inquiring on behalf of a…More
Tag Archives: Derrida
Even more radical pedagogy
This week Beatriz Colomina spoke at the Andrew Carnegie Lecture Series at the University of Edinburgh on radical pedagogy. That prompted me to rush to Jacques Rancière’s book The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which she referenced. The book is a satirical quasi-historical account of an actual nineteenth century French schoolteacher who practiced liberal teaching methods, and sought to emancipate…More
Deconstruct that!
Fish pie essentials include leftover cooked fish mixed with bechamel sauce covered in creamy mashed potatoes and baked in the oven. For a deconstructed fish pie on the other hand the chef prepares the dish so that the main ingredients are cooked and put on the plate individually. The eater can see and taste what the “pie” is made of and savour the components…More
Why cartoons have animals 2
Watching pet owners coach their pets to talk provides one of the more amusing diversions on YouTube. Apparently you can train a dog to say “hello” as a kind of vocalised yawn, or to growl out something like “sausages.” In a post in May 2012 I outlined 9 reasons why cartoons feature animals. Here’s a 10th reason: getting animals to talk. It’s obvious: animals (non-human)…More
Architectural pragmatics
It’s important to get to the truth. Michael Gove, the current UK education secretary, thinks that we are selling short the truth about WWI: “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part…More
Derrida for stand-ups
It’s easy to get carried away with words, either written or spoken, especially if you’re good at stringing them together. I was reminded of this propensity at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with its programme category “Spoken Word,” indicating entertainments in which amusing writers like David Sedaris stand up and talk, and others sit and listen…More
Loose ends
Nobody knows where anything comes from any more. DNA testing reveals horse meat in hamburger mince. Do British food authorities “have sufficient measures in place to cope with the increasing globalisation of the food supply chain?” (Independent) Not being able to identify where things start is a bit like the problem of origins in philosophy: “The…More
The bliss of ignorance
It’s old news now, but Prime Minister David Cameron was asked on a late night US tv show if he knew what Magna Carta meant in English. He didn’t and had to bluff (Guardian). An acquaintance told me about an overseas visitor who thought that Magna Carter was the lady in the green dress in…More
Heidegger and vertigo
Apparently Mount Everest is so busy during climbing season you have to queue to get to the top. (See Mail Online article.) Some people prefer horizontal pastimes (eg swimming), but there’s something irresistible about verticality. TV producer and scriptwriter Russell T Davies famously employed “the vertical chase” in his Dr Who episodes. Characters are pursued…More
Intoxicated by colour
Who can resist colour! Colour provides a metaphor for pleasure, health and vitality. Spring is colourful; winter is grey. The world of the child is supposedly bright with innocent colours, compared to the dull tones of old age and decay. But don’t efflorescences of colour also indicate contamination, virulence and toxicity?More