Culture, Grad School Style
My criminal court appearance this morning didn't quite have anything to do with court. In fact, it wasn't worth my while at all. I ironed a shirt last night. I got out of bed at 7:30. I walked down there, and met Cornelia and Rashad. We walked in and I had to take my belt off and all that good stuff. After the ex-ray machine thing, I got into a nice conversation with the guard who saw that I was from California (he saw my ID, which still has California emblazoned across it). I told him I was from L.A. and he asked where and I told him the Valley and I don't think it did much for him. He was almost disappointed, like he wanted me to say something more exciting. It seems the Valley doesn't really count anymore. Well, it was big in the 80s. Anyway, that was a fun interaction and after putting my belt back on, my cohorts went upstairs to wait in a short line. When I got up to the window, I was met by a woman who hardly said two words to me. She was having difficulty negotiating her space because there was the keyboard, her morning coffee and a breakfast item. Very slowly she clicked this key and that, and pulled a sheet of paper from a large stack that read: Criminal Court of the City of New York The issuing agency has failed to file a legally acceptable accusatory instrument with this court. The matter has been dismissed. There is no need for you to return to court on the docket number referenced above.
Better luck next time. I'm off to read Plato's Protagoras and Aristophanes' The Clouds for my Concept of Culture class:
A preoccupation of many philosophers with the phenomenon of culture long antedates J. G. Herder's remark that "nothing is more indeterminate than this word." Still, the preoccupation with culture has been widely shared ever since, by historians, sociologists and anthropologists. What, then, can this evidently indeterminate word, "culture," mean? How should we approach the understanding and transmission of culture? In this introductory survey, we rehearse the main debates surrounding the idea of culture and its development. Whether discussing the Greek notion of paidea, the Romantic ideal of genius, or the historiographic essays of the Annales historians of our own day, we will be tracing the dynamics of two contrasting approaches to culture: the broadly empirical and anthropological approach, and the more narrowly normative and "humanistic" approach. The readings include works by Plato, Vico, Herder, Marx, Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Lucien Febvre, Braudel, A.L. Kroeber, J. Heuzinga, Ernst Cassirer, and Raymond Williams.
What? Gotta love grad school.
