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What's 'required reading' in your opinion ...

16:04 / 03.03.06

...or even 'highly recommended'?

Over on Barbannoy George Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language' (1946) was lightly suggested as 'required reading'.

I wonder what else has similar status in people's minds.
Which single nonfiction essay would you want all 'Lithers to read? Extra smiles if links to online free texts are provided. Also, why? What point does it make, what does it explain or problematise particularly well?

The thread 'When I grow up I want to be (a theory bitch)' is related but seemed sufficiently dissimilar to merit a new topic. This one 'the politics of "Great Books" might also inform suggestions.

16:28 / 03.03.06

I would second Orwell's Politics and the English language... his lesson about cliched metaphors is something most writers could do well to learn.

02:22 / 04.03.06

Well, I've just been assigning a ton of homework to the population of Barbelithia; in addition to being responsible for the Orwell suggestion, I pretty much demanaded that everyone read A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf in the Feminism 101 thread, and am threatening to give an essay examination over it on Monday.

Goodness Gracious Meme

02:40 / 04.03.06

Ha. I came here to suggest 'A Room of One's Own' by Virginia Woolf.

So instead, I'll suggest Black Skin, White Masks, by Fritz Fanon

Great, readable prose and full of the best thinking ever.

See also anything by Tariq Ali. Especially Clash Of Fundementalisms

An astonishingly intelligent person with enormous historical knowledge of Eastern and Western civilisations, explains to the rest of us how we've ended up in the mess we're in.

Read it.

09:02 / 04.03.06

Hmmm.... I just tried to think of a shortish essay that covers some Templey type themes (without, of course being mad) perhaps gives some autobiographical background and/or deals with the body - can't think of anything so far. Perhaps I should write it.

Any thoughts? Will cruise Phil Hine's site for ideas but it's down at the mo.

09:32 / 04.03.06

Well, funny you should say that...

I have been pondering what my own choice would be. More of a 'highly recommended' - I think it's David Abram's "The Ecology of Magic", which is kind of Temple-flavoured. It's the first chapter of his book 'Spell of the sensuous' which is definitely on list of the top 5 books that have affected my worldview most, along with e.g. Holy Scripture.

Don't be put off if belief etc is not your cup of tea. He's describing a worldview that he entered through demonstrating sleight of hand magic, where he is messing with perception. He realised through worldwide travels with his magic that a lot of what is understood in the modernist world as "supernatural" is actually very concrete interactions with the more-than-human world: the insects, birds and plants.

(He has also has an overview of the phenomenological approach to perception in the book, Merleau-Ponty's kind of thinking which seems tasty to me.) To me this work is an invitation to a kind of human being that we need if we are to make human culture sustainable. An invitation to pick up respectful relationship with the non-humans around us and share the ecologies we inhabit. Which is vitally necessary for a future sustainable human culture to be built! It's revolutionary imo (he says it much better), please don't be put off by my stumbling underslept word-wielding.

Runner up probably Bruno Latour's 'War of the worlds: But what about peace?' (link is to a pdf), which problematizes science's claim to truth - points out how most inside it don't realise that they are wagin war on the meaning-making activities of human groups. Written post 9/11(2001) but most of the points he's making are vitally relevant to the 'total war century'.

15:50 / 04.03.06

Wow, I really hated that Latour article.

So I'll link to Sokal's page on the Social Text affair. This includes the infamous hoax article, though one of the most interesting things about the article is that most people fail to see a problem with it despite the overblown claims, non sequiturs and scientific goobledegook - essentially, gross inaccuracies about science aren't always seen as a problem in a critique of science. Latour's piece reminded me of all that.

pointless & uncalled for

19:30 / 06.03.06

Right about now Vagina Warriors - Eve Ensler wouldn't be astray on the barbelith reading list.

On the advised list I'm adding the text and purdy pikchures of Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Africa by Riefenstahl. Plus, The Trouble with Islam by Irshad Manji.

19:46 / 06.03.06

Socrates' Apology and its whole 'I am teh gadfly!' a.k.a. "It was a jok!1!12' defense let me occasionally decide that the trolls on barbelith are a part of the board, too.

20:02 / 06.03.06

am464: Thanks for that David Abram link, looks very interesting, will read and digest in a sec. It looks (on first glance) very similar to Susan Greenwood's stuff. Don't know if you've seen it? Very good, magical writing informed with a critical/cultural studies type of perspective.

julius has no imagination

21:12 / 06.03.06

Is this the Barbelith Required Reading list then? The one that tom-karika told me I'd be getting shortly when he found out I'd got an account?

Oh wait, this is essays. I haven't actually done much reading in that area, other than stuff by Orwell (a while ago, too). I'm currently reading Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World (which is a book, not an essay) which mentions the Sokal thing, which I shall have to browse at leisure some time.

But then again, I have not actually read any fiction since 2005, so I want to get some of that in (and indeed, preferably relatively light fiction) before jumping into the heav(y/ier) stuff again.