Oh dear, I feel like the White Rabbit, rushing along looking at his watch and fretting at how late he is. I’m very late. But that’s because I didn’t know. I wasn’t told. No one told me. I only found out by accident, dropping in for a read of Eric the Unred. He’s got this Book Meme thing going, and he said he was going to pass the stick to three people, and one of them was My Humble Self. Is my face red. He passed me this stick and I promptly dropped it and went downtown to hang around the pool hall and frighten people. That’s not co-operative.

Right then.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do … Read the rest

A little wisdom from Foucault. ‘Truth and Power.’

Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it includes regular effects of power…’Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it.

That’s a pretty glaring bit of rhetorical sleight of hand. It’s fairly obvious that he’s talking about truth-claims, not truth itself. There’s a big (and important) difference! Obviously truth-claims can be (and often are) power-moves. The same is not … Read the rest