One of the most perspicacious social theorists of our time, Zygmunt Bauman, has given us a compelling, if not wholly original sketch of the contemporary consumer, or what he calls “Homo consumens”. I prefer to add “Gyna” (woman) to “Homo” (man), not only for feminist reasons of representing all the members of the human race, […]
General
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Are paper books the horse and carriage of the 21st century?
There has been a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching in the book world about the challenges posed by e-books. There is also the separate, but related, matter of the massive, loss-leader discounting that book-store chains practise routinely. Cheap books and e-books are apparently threatening civilisation as we know it. They are certainly causing the demise […]
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Armstrong legend ends in betrayal
The old saying goes that if something is too good to be true, it often is. Before this year, Lance Armstrong represented the ultimate story of a man’s triumph over disease and himself as the Texan went on to win seven Tour de France titles, a record. While there were always whispers of drug use, […]
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What is enlightenment?
The question has sometimes been asked (and answered) in philosophy, whether the historical Enlightenment has been sustained. Adorno and Horkheimer, for instance – in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) – claimed that the historical Enlightenment had dialectically been transformed into the subjection to, if not enslavement by, technical rationality and an impersonal system of administration. Willi […]
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Champions League off to good start
The T20 Champions League, being hosted in South Africa, has gotten off to a rollicking start, as both the Titans and Highveld Lions keeping local spirits high with fine victories over the Perth Scorchers and Mumbai Indians respectively. Fortunate enough to cover both games on the Highveld, one could see the crowds came for the […]
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Sharks favourites for Currie Cup
The Currie Cup has reached its business end, with the semi-finals seeing the Sharks up against the Blue Bulls in Durban, and defending champions the Golden Lions locking horns with Western Province in Johannesburg. The Durbanites finished top of table, so if they can beat the Bulls, who romped to 50-29 victory at Ellis Park, […]
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Validating Ian Parker’s work
The following is an excerpt (posted here with editor Grahame Hayes’ permission) from a longer review I wrote for Psychology in Society 41 of Ian Parker’s book Lacanian Psychoanalysis – Revolutions in Subjectivity (Routledge 2011). I post it on TL to give interested people an idea of Parker’s scholarship and just how scandalous Manchester Metropolitan […]
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Gay Pride is political
“I’m queer, too, you stupid f**k,” screamed the Joburg Pride board chair, Tanya Harford, as she lunged at me. Her attack was in response to my colleagues and me telling her that we were part of the LGBT community. She was trying forcibly to remove us from the road where about 20 of us (almost […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media
An incorrigible perversion
This is a story about breast cancer. It is not about a woman who has succumbed to it, nor about a woman who has triumphed over it. It is instead a story about a cold-hearted business decision to make and market a “natural product” which it is claimed contains “nutrients and plant extracts that help […]
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Protesting against critical psychologist Ian Parker’s suspension
From various sources, located in different countries across the globe, I have received the message, in inverted commas, below, signed by China Mills. It concerns the suspension, from Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, of Ian Parker, one of the best known and most influential critical psychologists in the world today, who is also a practising […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
South Africa on the brink
Two weeks into the truckers’ strike and South Africa stands on the precipice of serious societal breakdown. The Marikana massacre was undoubtedly a tragic event in its own right, although it may prove to have merely been the spark that lit the fuse. The powder keg waiting to explode is the imminent shortage in liquid […]
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Einstein in new contexts
Many students who discover, for the first time, the way that a concept’s meaning can subtly change from one context to the next, are so taken with this that they jump to the relativistic conclusion, namely, that new contexts change a concept in such a manner that, in the new context, it is incomparably different […]