Friday 4th November

Hi!

Open your laptops!

Firstly I would like you to feed me your individual blogspot.com address for this Critical Thinking course. If you use the comment button your message will come to me as e-mail, I will read what you've got and get back to you.

Secondly I want you to start thinking about the way the readings connect together. You started with Jonathan Meades on Zaha, an interesting piece of writing, full of wit and faint praise, perhaps a little too English by half, very clever clever. It came down to him having a problem with the way Zaha could not explain her work, not that he was going to say that directly. Then Badiou attempted to explain something it is almost impossible to explain, our economic hell, he did it by use of an elaborate and appropriate metaphor; 'We're living in a movie'. We live on the information we are given (the media) what happens if that information is false? The third piece, by Dave Hickey, simply took to the age old tactic of inversion; 'You probably think this place is awful, but actually it's great'. It is also a lyrical piece, about opportunity and, in a way, love, a love of writing and a love of ordinary things. Mike Davis started by writing a piece of science fiction, but we soon see he's not very good at it, he's not lyrical at all. The contemporary world hurts Mike Davis, it's iniquities make his blood boil, so he documents the facts so they speak for themselves, and in the process makes you understand that Dubai is indeed a shithole, and the two pieces together do at least confirm that the Las Vegas of the 1990's and the Dubai of the noughties are very different indeed, and only superficially similar to those who are not thinking.

Now to Terry Eagleton. Here we are introduced to something called Cultural Theory, where, in the first paragraph, he explains great work has been done, and goes on to explain it's transformation. Eagleton is also trying to explain something difficult in an easy way, using lots of simile people can understand (Zaha take note). You need to understand what were those great achievements in Cultural Theory and why did they happen? They certainly have a lot to do with the pursuit of truth, the underlying reasons we do things. The second thing is for you to decide whether Eagleton is nostalgic for the old days, or simply preparing us for the moment that Lady Ga Ga ends up running a university sociology department- yet another spectacle perhaps.

Once we get a discussion going and you leave comments against this blog, we can develop this conversation further as I make new blogs responding to your questions.

Finally, at the end of the session, say 4.30, you should turn to the blog beneath this titled 'Session IV' and run down to the library to get Berman's book, maybe photocopy the relevant chapters for each other. That is if you haven't been wonderful and already bought them from Amazon.