Friday, May 10, 2013

Melville: "What a Revelation!"

"Hawthorne critiques hegemonic manhood's recourse to domination as a symptom of the traumatic instabilities at the core of traditional models of male identity."--from the Spring 2013 mailer of the Ohio State University Press.

Herman Melville: "What a revelation"!

I want to move Andrew Apter's comment up here where it is visible: 

andrew apterMay 11, 2013 at 6:54 AM 

And I thought Heidegger was bad. "Hegemonic manhood" sounds like something that comes out of the woods at night to get you out of your bed. I remember reading Sokol's "Fashionable Nonsense" when I was a graduate student in Philosophy. Sokol (a scientist) had intentionally written a sham article about "the political and social implications of quantum mechanics along postmodern lines." He published the article to great acclaim from the postmodern academics, then ripped the carpet out from under them by claiming the entire matter was a hoax. It was a one-note trick but worked beautifully. Something Melville would have appreciated no doubt.

1 comment:

  1. And I thought Heidegger was bad. "Hegemonic manhood" sounds like something that comes out of the woods at night to get you out of your bed. I remember reading Sokol's "Fashionable Nonsense" when I was a graduate student in Philosophy. Sokol (a scientist) had intentionally written a sham article about "the political and social implications of quantum mechanics along postmodern lines." He published the article to great acclaim from the postmodern academics, then ripped the carpet out from under them by claiming the entire matter was a hoax. It was a one-note trick but worked beautifully. Something Melville would have appreciated no doubt.

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