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Title: Stupidity by Avital Ronell ISBN: 0-252-07127-1 Publisher: University of Illinois Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Mark, A reader
Comment: A good read; a book that ought to be read and read again.
Rating: 1
Summary: Pretentious to the point of being, well... stupid
Comment: I am sorry, but there is something about a book about titled "Stupidity" which contains page after page of sentences like:
"From the culture that has been inscribed by Marx and Nietzsche as being inextricably involved with stupidity - German "culture" has brought us Simplicius Simplicissimus, the Taugenichts, Eulenspiegel, the schlemiel, and other literary cognates of historical dumbing - we also have, owing to Robert Musil, a number of intense reflections on what constitutes stupidity, its figural status and serial developments as something of a concept."
I kept reading waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the self-irony to be acknowledged. For the book to become interesting and readable; humorous. It never happened, and I came to the horrible realization that this was, in fact, a dead serious, completely impenetrable, unreadable book on the subject of stupidity. As such, I can only deem it stupid.
Not only that, but it is full of jargon and obscure jargon and unexplained literary references, an example of academia at its most loathsome and most removed from the real world.
It reminds me of the words of a much better commentator on foolishness, John Ralston Saul (whose books I all recommend most highly), regarding the degredation of language by philosophers and other specialists.
"The example of philosophy actually verges on comedy. Socrates, Descartes, Bacon, Locke and Voltaire did not write in a specialized dialect. They wrote in basic Greek, French and English and they wrote for the general reader of the day. Their language is clear, eloquent and often both moving and amusing. The contemporary philosopher does not write in the basic language of our day. He is not acceptable to the public. . . . This means that almost anyone with a precent pre-university level education can still pick up Bacon or Descartes, Voltaire or Locke and read them with both ease and pleasure. Yet even a university graduate is hard pressed to make his way through interpretations of these same thinkers by leading contemporary intellectuals..."
Somewhere in the process of reading about and buying this book I saw Avital Ronell described as something along the lines of a leading contemporary intellectual. This book certainly establishes that in my mind...
Rating: 5
Summary: Try it
Comment: Read this book like a science fiction--then you will enjoy it.
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Title: Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania by Avital Ronell ISBN: 0803289448 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Finitude's Score: Essays for the End of the Millennium (Texts and Contexts, Vol 8) by Avital Ronell ISBN: 0803289499 Publisher: University of Nebraska Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 0415969212 Publisher: Roultledge Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Audiovisions: Cinema & Television As Entr'Actes in History (Film Culture in Transition) by Siegfried Zielinski ISBN: 905356313X Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $10.50 |
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Title: The Encyclopedia of Stupidity by Matthijs van Boxsel ISBN: 1861891598 Publisher: Reaktion Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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