The past several weeks have brought an incredible number of "calls for abstracts" for volumes in the various "pop culture and philosophy" series. As I've argued previously on this blog, these books are an embarrassment to our profession and should be boycotted. The enterprise reached a new low, however, this morning with the announcement of a volume on Spider-Man and Philosophy.
Yes, at first the idea of such a volume seems no more stupid and useless than the others. But wait. As is typical, the "call for abstracts" includes a rather long and random list of silly suggested paper topics. In addition to the obvious suggestions-- which involve nothing more than taking a perennial philosophical question and inserting Spider-Man into it (e.g., "Spider-Man and the problem of evil"; "Spider-Man and personal identity")-- there is the suggestion that one might write a paper on "Just how does Spidey-sense work?"
Finally the series becomes aware of itself: An open invitation to utter bullshit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
This reminds me in a way of the degeneration of the "The science of..." type books. The first one, The Science of Star-Trek, was fairly interesting, had some decent science in it, and was about a show that, while nonsense, was at least supposed to be sciency. At they went on (not in a real series, but copy-cat style) to "The Science of Star Wars" to "The Science of Super Heroes" to, finally, "The Science of Harry Potter", one really did have to wonder if the idea of teaching someone something hadn't completely been replaced by "look at that pot of money!" Now, we've all had that thought at times, surely, but still, to debase one's self for it...
god, who even reads those books?
And yet, someone must-- walk into any B+N bookstore and the shelves are crammed with pop fluff wankery.
Whilst the Hegels gather dust and yellow...
Trev:
"Pop fluff wankery" made my day.
Now, now, lest we forget the closing speech made by David Carriden in Kill Bill Vol 2 concerning Superman and his views on a weak, do-nothing, American humanity.
But I can see your frustrations, and I personally do not blame you.
By the way, I've been learning a lot from you. Keep it up.
Call for abstracts for inclusion in a new volume in Blackwell's Philosophy and Pop Culture series: Spiros and Philosophy. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
A Russellian analysis of the name 'Spiros' -- disguised definite description ('the cranky jerk')?
Do kook magnets bear responsibility for their kook-magnetism?
Spirosian aesthetics: what's worse, Scarlet Johanssen covering Tom Waits or original songs by Billy Joel?
Doom and determinism: is our fuckedness causally necessitated?
Is Spiros a semi-rational creature confronting an increasingly fucked up universe, or is Spiros an increasingly fucked up creature confronting a semi-rational universe?
Crankiness: vice or virtue?
Glaucon:
Sign me up right now!! S&P should however include a chapter by the feted one entitled "Self-loathing and Contextualism"--
Obviously!
Glaucon:
My contribution title:
"Spiros as Philosophical Other in the Public Sphere: Getting Downright Dialectically Negative--an Analysis through Adorno and Derrida"
I heard you get money for these things...
Platowe:
Me likey. But perhaps you should ghostwrite it: would Spiros contribute to such a volume, even one in his honor, even if the payment weren't monetary but rather was the chance to get to work on Billy Joel with pliers and a blowtorch?
729:
True -- but don't do it for the money! Do it for the satisfaction that comes with making a genuine contribution to knowledge. Or, for the satisfaction that comes with irritating the shit out of Spiros.
These books aren't so bad. In fact, they include some good stuff. (er, OK, I've contributed to one of them) What IS bad about them is the way they're crowding out everything else in philosophy sections. They are multiplying like weeds. Then again, maybe after exposure to a pop culture volume, some people will come back and buy some more nutritious fare. It might not be bad for "the profession" to send this sort of bait out to the masses.
Brahms,
To be sure, there are a few good things that happen to appear in these volumes. But on the whole, they're very, very bad: poorly written, poorly argued bullshitting, all under the deluded self-description of making philosophy "relevant" (by doing it poorly).
I had a personal experience that illustrates a possible benefit of these books. My mother, who is not college educated, has expressed bewilderment and confusion over my chosen discipline. At one point, she actually said "how can you be teaching logic? Isn't philosophy completely illogical?" This, of course, illustrates the horrid recasting of philosophy as talking out of one's ass. Still, she picked up one of these pop philosophy books (no idea which one) in hopes of better understanding what I see in this crazy field. This led to a good few conversations on an assortment of topics, and these helped her understand in at least some manner what I see in this field, what this field entails, etc.
All of that said, many of the essays are terrible. Still, I would rather these books hang out in bookstores' philosophy sections than "metaphysical" books all about new age bs!
Like anything else, one would have to argue against a specific text in this tradition, rather than the whole genre. Most people are willing to give this volume a pass:http://www.amazon.com/Philosophers-Explore-Matrix-Christopher-Grau/dp/0195181077/ref=pd_sim_b_3. Colin McGinn, Andy Clark, Christopher Grau, James Pryor, and David Chalmers make an appearance.
Just for the record: *I* didn't leave that last anonymous comment, and I don't know who did. The way in which my name is listed among the higher-powered contributors is (admittedly) bizarre and suspicious. It may be that my mother reads this blog.
Post a Comment