“Symbolically, future generations have replaced the proletariat in the collective imaginary as the focal point of public concern”.
Pierre Rosanvallon, 2013, The Society of Equals, Harvard University Press.
Category Archives: Bite Size Theory
Bite Size Theory: Derrida/Searle
“It is no small statement to affirm that the richness of this controversy makes ostensible not the insurmountable divergence of the continental and analytic traditions, but rather the wealth and diversity of the discussions of intentionality in the twentieth century”.
Raoul Moati, 2014, Derrida/Searle: Deconstruction and Ordinary Language, Columbia University Press.
Bite Size Theory: Fear Itself
“Overall, the New Deal had to travel uncharted territory, often without maps in hand. To comprehend its achievements and their price, we must incorporate uncertainty’s state of doubt, and identify the objects of fear and the effects of being frightened”.
Ira Katznelson, 2013, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, Liveright Publishing.
Bite Size Theory: The Big Screen
“In the early 1960s, there was confusion over what to call this transaction – was it film, the movies, or cinema? You could tell a person’s taste and agenda by the word he used most often. “Cinema” meant the history, and the suggestion that it has been superior then; “film” was the essential function and might be covering an urge to make the stuff: while “movie” usually meant America and fun”.
David Thomson, 2012, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies and What They Did to Us, Allen Lane.
Bite Size Theory: Rethinking the South African Crisis
“Ironically, attempts to render technical that which is inherently political are feeding into and amplifying the proliferation of populist politics”.
Gill Hart, 2013, Rethinking the South African Crisis: Nationalism, Populism, Hegemony, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press.
Bite Size Theory: The Faces of Injustice
“If we look more carefully at injustice, we will not find it any easier to answer the question: Is this a misfortune or an injustice? on any given occasion, but we may be less passively unjust than if we simply match complaints against the rules and come to a quick conclusion. To investigate the victim’s claims in the ways that I have suggested is only a tentative test to guide us, but it is both in keeping with the best impulses of democracy and our only alternative to a complacency that is bound to favor the unjust”.
Judith Shklar, 1990, The Faces of Injustice, Yale University Press.
Bite Size Theory: Sincerity and Authenticity
“If sincerity has lost its former status, if the word itself has for us a hollow sound and seems almost to negate its meaning, that is because it does not propose being true to one’s own self as an end but only a means. If one is true to oneself for the purpose of avoiding falsehood to others, is one being truly true to one’s own self? The moral end in view implies a public end in view, with all that this suggests of the esteem and fair repute that follows upon the correct fulfilment of a public role”.
Lionel Trilling, 1972, Sincerity and Authenticity, Oxford University Press.
Bite Size Theory: Wrong-Doing and Truth-Telling
“What seems interesting to me is to pull out the profound and serious thought that engages our historical destiny in the institutions that nonetheless give the impression of merely speaking the language of barbarism, archaism, and institutional idiocy”.
Michel Foucault, 2014, Wrong-Doing and Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice, University of Chicago Press.
Bite Size Theory: The Comfort of Things
“All my academic studies have shown that the people who successfully forge meaningful relationships to things are often the same as those who forge meaningful relationships with people, while those who fail at one usually also fail at the other, because the two are much more akin and entwined than is commonly appreciated.”
Daniel Miller, 1998, The Comfort of Things, Polity Press.
Bite Size Theory: Tricks of the Trade
“I insisted earlier that researchers must learn to question, not accept blindly, what the people whose world they are studying think and believe. Now I have to say that at the same time they should pay attention to just that. After all, people know a lot about the world they live and work in. They have to know a lot to make their way through its complexities. They have to adjust to all its contradictions and conflicts, all the problems it throws their way. If they didn’t know enough to do that, they wouldn’t have lasted there this long. So they know, plenty.”
Howard Becker, 1998, Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It, University of Chicago Press.
Pop Theory 