Here’s the thing about academics. They complain about low pay, and yet they shop at Whole Foods. I’ve yet to see an academic eat Burger King. A grad student from another university once asked to meet with me at a conference. I take the guy to Burger King, and he wouldn’t order.
Since I have posted so much on Marx vs. Weber, modernity, and development over the last few weeks, I have posted an updated slide deck of my lectures on Karl Marx and the Marxian Tradition (together with @ferarteaga) here:
https://t.co/TOGm7jXMKG
This is a long deck: 437 slides in the last compilation! (It also takes a few seconds to upload.) If I were to teach it carefully, with plenty of class discussion, I would require a whole semester. Even then, some topics (e.g., the Frankfurt School) receive only a cursory treatment because I focus more on economics and political economy, broadly construed. I hope to extend the discussion of those someday.
However, I cover topics rarely seen in these courses, such as Hans-Georg Backhaus and the Neue Marx-Lektüre, because most of the work is not translated into English and must be read in the original German.
I don’t have an equivalent slide deck on Max Weber, as I haven’t lectured on him. Hopefully, one day I will.
Comments and feedback are very welcome.
How could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office or here at home, instead of getting onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?
Franz Kafka, 1912.
I am hankering for old-school criticism of things that aren’t literature from writers like Whitney Balliett or Serge Daney. Just incredibly strong pieces on individual topics/pieces in their niche. Could be anything really (fashion, furniture design, architecture, etc)
@no_earthquake I guess i’m quite interested in the “personal style” side because it seems to necessarily ask how you construct a personality (especially from first impressions) vs what I think designers mostly do which is to create and/or hone a whole language.
@no_earthquake I like this. Also interested to hear if you have an opinion on the split between style and design. Like, do you think someone dressing themselves everyday and a designer creating a collection (or even an “aesthetic”) are doing something mutually exclusive?
@no_earthquake I’m not interested in ranking, moreso trying to see what people value in how people wear clothes; of course it’s interesting to see their subjects and judge them for yourself, but I think the actual conversation is more interesting, I don’t really care who it’s about.
@no_earthquake That’s very fair, the term “well dressed” sounds way too close to “best dressed” which has horrible a GQ “which fleece you should buy” stink to it, I apologize.
@no_earthquake I’m not talking about rankings, i think i’ve said that multiple times. I’m just interested in the kind of people you think dress well and why. I dont know why you think i asked about numbers or even comparisons here.
@no_earthquake Well that also raises the question of what “being in line” with your life means when talking about someone else’s style/life. On the one hand, you can participate in ready-made narratives and shared styles, but don’t we also have to try and think about individual deviations then?
@no_earthquake But that’s the game isn’t it. I guess i’m not really asking what I asked because it’s hard to put in the form of a tweet, it was more of a provocation. Whenever you ask “who has the best style” you are also asking the other person what their opinion on style vs person is.
@no_earthquake Obviously no one needs to assume there actually *is* anything more than dressing nicely, but I am interested in that almost kind of hagiographic treatment of certain people’s styles that some critics have (frazier with biddle and miles davis, campo’s sprezzatura essay, etc)
@no_earthquake Some don’t think more than 100 people on earth (I doubt george frazier or miles davis would’ve gone that far) so I worded it vaguely. I suppose a more specific version of the question would be - do you think there are people whose style goes above “dressing well” and if so, who?