In his chapter “Against Sacraments,” Peter Leithart quotes Mike Featherstone, who pointed out that postmodernism “moved beyond individualism with a communal feeling being generated,” which is good, but did so in a way in which people “come together in temporary emotional communities” (AC, p. 74), which is entirely inadequate. To this Leithart observes, “The postmodern …
Don’t You Love Science?
“The association of eugenics with race, social class and the emerging ideas about ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ cultures was unmistakable. The terms themselves were first used around the turn of the century to describe people of intellectual or aesthetic superiority (highbrow) or inferiority (lowbrow). They were derived from phrenology, a nineteenth-century practice widely used in determining …
Wanting What He Wants
“Rivalry does not arise because the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it. In desiring an object the rival alerts the subject to the desirability of the object. The rival, then, serves as a model for the subject, not only in regard …
What Is A Highbrow?
“Harper’s Magazine examined the three categories at mid-century. ‘What is a highbrow?’ the writer asked, followed by three replies. ‘A highbrow is a man who has found something more interesting than women,’ Edgar Wallace, a writer of crime novels and thrillers once said. Harper’s writer thought that too vague, but that Columbia professor and author …
Federal Scapegoating
“If the entire community were not already subsumed under a single head, that of the surrogate victim, it would be impossible to attribute to the sacrificial substitution the significance we have claimed for it, impossible to establish a social basis for the institution. The original act of violence is unique and spontaneous. Ritual sacrifices, however, …
Like Toothpaste
” . . . in the aftermath of a controversy over The Birth of a Nation in 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the cinema a ‘business pure and simple’ and not an art form to be protected by the First Amendment. The movies, then, could be regulated as a consumer product” (William Romanowski, Pop …
The Guilt Sponge
“The city of Athens prudently kept on hand a number of unfortunate souls, whom it maintained at public expense, for appointed times as well as in certain emergencies . . . The rite is therefore a repetition of the original, spontaneous ‘lynching’ that restored order in the community by reestablishing, around the figure of the …
Give It A Rest
Editor, I have a proposal for your newspaper, and for Mr. Ralph Nielsen. In his most recent screed, Ralph said that he declined a public debate with me because he is not a trained speaker, and he prefers the written word. Good enough. This, therefore, is my proposal. The Argonaut should publish 500 words from …
Should Sinners Die?
Editor, I would like to make one small, but important, correction to the story you ran on the protest at the recent “Hate is not a family value” dance. I was quoted as saying that homosexuality is a sin, and that those who sin deserve to die. This is quite true, but a missing point, …
A Substitute Aristocracy in a Democracy
“American popular culture is as old as the colonies, but the appearance of high and popular culture as distinctive categories in American life occurred around the turn of this century [1900] . . . a cultural hierarchy emerged that divided American life into ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture as a primary means of social, intellectual and …