Hi all,
Two points of interest that might be relevant to today's class:
1) Alongside Pietz, another great source concerning "fetishism", its history, etymology, critique etc. from a non-anthropological perspective is F. Max Muller's 1878 lecture "Is Fetishism a Primitive Form of Religion?" which is available on Google Books here and in a newer version here.
2) It occurred to me during class that today's article by Stanely Fish on Watson the computer could have come straight from Rousseau, p. 44: "In any animal I see nothing but an ingenious machine to which nature has given sense in order for it to renew its strength and to protect itself, to a certain point, from all that tends to destroy or disturb it. I am aware of precisely the same things in the human machine, with the difference that nature alone does everything in the operations of an animal, whereas man contributes, as a free agent, to his own operations. The former chooses or rejects by instinct and the later by an act of freedom. Hence an animal cannot deviate from the rule that is prescribed to it, even when it would be advantageous to do so, while man deviates from it, often to his own detriment."
Just an interesting parallel, thought I'd share.
Just to add some of my own post-class thoughts to Ian's -- today's encouragement to read David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital reminded me of a Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) lecture that Harvey gave last April called "Crises of Capitalism." For those who are interested in watching it, here's the link that leads directly to a video of him lecturing: http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/vision-videos/david-harvey-the-crises-of-capitalism
ReplyDeleteI recommend, however, the white-board animated version which is also produced by the RSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
Though interesting on the whole, the lecture is perhaps most relevant to some of the broader issues that we have discussed in class beginning at 01:47.