From Postmodern Culture, Marc Botha (Durham): How To Lose Your Voice Well; Annette Schlichter (UC- Irvine): "I Can't Get Sexual Genders Straight": Kathy Acker's Writing of Bodies and Pleasures; Steven Helmling (Delaware): How To Read Adorno on How To Read Hegel; a review of Chantal Mouffe's On the Political; and a review of After Poststructuralism: Reading, Stories and Theory by Colin Davis. A review of Dialectics of the Self: Transcending Charles Taylor by Ian Fraser.
From Cabinet, Talk to the Hand: a generalized sense that something is awry in the world of gesture is considerably older than Giorgio Agamben allows; in February 2004, French-Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan filed a libel suit in the Paris courts against philosopher Alain Finkielkraut (and the transcript); and I Can See Your Ideology Moving: An essay on Ventriloquizing Marx.
Eric A. Posner (Chicago) and Adrian Vermeule (Harvard): Constitutional Showdowns. A review of Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review by Christopher F. Zurn. A review of Reflections on Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment by George Anastaplo. A review of Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, and Courts by Michael J. Perry. A review of Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes and Trial of a "Desk Murderer" by David Cesarani. Mark Lilla reviews Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia by Lesley Chamberlain. Been there, shun that: American historians have, for the most part, abandoned the study of culture, writes Richard Pells.
From The Chronicle, after years of controversy, the University of Colorado has fired Ward Churchill, asserting that the decision is unrelated to his having famously insulted the victims of the September 11 attacks. From Inside Higher Ed, two articles, pro and con, on the Churchill firing. Academia's hidden crackpots: What kind of discipline would nurture a hate-filled academic such as fired professor Ward Churchill? Sentimental Revolutionaries: College Republicans pick a new leader. Colleges across the county are engaged in a grand social experiment to fuse academic and social life; a look at how chastity clubs are a new concept at elite (and liberal) campuses; how the Greeks learned to stop worrying and live with the Roman goddess of wisdom; every institution of higher learning has a slogan — something about truth or character strengthening. Then there are the unofficial slogans; and a gap year is good for the gapper, but what about mom and dad?
