Born on this date. Any self-respecting funkster, acid or otherwise, should have this album in their collection — but this album is far more than just that. My copy is a Japanese import and though pricey, it was dosh very well spent. Here is a good assessment of Baby Huey by Leo DeLuca.
A timely paper by an occasional collaborator of mine, the very excellent Ted Lewis.
Attempts to control the flow of information through a social network by censorship or blocking are unlikely to succeed for a number of reasons: determining what is true and what is fake may be difficult; identification and response to outbreaks of viral information may be economically impossible in a timely manner due to the size of the network and speed of spreading; and censuring may be considered bad for business.
Forthcoming: Walker Percy, Philosopher.
Percy on the Allure of Violence and Destruction
Anxiety concerning the decline and fall of civilization appears throughout Walker Percy’s body of work. Smith argues that what sets Percy’s account of this issue apart from others rests in his preoccupation not so much with depicting actual disaster for what it might tell us about human nature, politics, or our souls, but rather, with his focus on the end of our society as a clue that might help explain our predicament. Percy saw his role as reading the signs of our spiritual and social disorders, and rendering them intelligible to an audience that increasingly possessed a language inadequate to understanding the situation. Percy’s analysis of our attitudes toward catastrophe, disaster, war, and the end of civilization proves a fertile ground for exploring the fault lines in our social and political life.
Gianna Englert reviews the the first complete English translation of Benjamin Constant’s On Religion: Considered in Its Source, Its Forms, and Its Developments.
Forthcoming: Walker Percy, Philosopher.
“There Must Be a Place”: Walker Percy and the Philosophy of Place
Patrick Connelly explores Walker Percy’s contribution to the philosophy of place by examining place-thinking in his fiction and nonfiction. Percy is first put in conversation with the contemporary philosopher of place Edward S. Casey. Both writers understand place as a source of meaning, the context for community, and the foundation for selfhood. This chapter then examines five major uses of place by Percy: the importance of embodiment in place, the concept of “nonplace,” the use of place in diagnosing individual and social pathologies, place as the context or symbol for the recovery of authentic selfhood, and the possibility of re-placement through pilgrimage and reentry. For Percy, place is central to human distinctiveness and dignity.
I’ve been exploring a terrific repository of “Rolfeana” curated by blogger/translator James Conway on his very interesting Strange Flowers blog, its tagline — “A cabinet of human curiosities”. If like me you have a soft spot for radical individualists (i.e. transgressive “characters”), then James’ blog is just the ticket:
[i]s a product of the blogger’s obsession with history’s footnotes, paragons of vivid individuality who elevated the craft of selfhood to an art. Because often it wasn’t what they left behind, but how they lived that was their real masterpiece. They might be difficult, ridiculous, contrary – even tragic – but never, ever dull.
