More juvenilia: How Two Hunters Were Discouraged By an Apparition (short story, age 12).
Author Archive | Roderick
By Heaven, I’ll Know Thy Thoughts
I realise to my surprise that I never got around to posting my APS paper “Shakespeare, Godwin, Kafka, and the Political Problem of Other Minds.” Okay, now I have.
Here’s the abstract:
Colin McGinn maintains that Othello is about the problem of other minds. But Othello’s version of the problem – the inaccessibility of particular others in particular respects, not of other minds per se – might seem to lack the generality needed to count as philosophical. Drawing on examples from Othello, Caleb Williams, and Amerika, I argue that Othello’s problem, while distinct from the traditional problem of other minds, is indeed a genuine philosophical problem, but one produced and sustained by alterable features of human society (specifically, race, gender, and class distinctions) rather than by unalterable features of cognition as such.
And speaking of Shakespeare, check out this neglected masterpiece.
Danger Elsewhere, Part 3
The Danger Number site has been updated with Time to Kill.
Anarchy in DC: Update
The location of Thursday’s Molinari Society session will be the McKinley Room (yes, there’s a certain irony there), on the Mezzanine level (click pic below for biggerness).
The Hand That Rocks the TARDIS
Don’t get me wrong; I greatly enjoyed the special, and I think Steven Moffat is the wasp’s elbows. But Moffat’s gender politics do continue to bug me. Ranking especially high on my feminist gripe-o-meter this past season were the “Mrs. Williams” comment in The God Complex, and the revelation that the seemingly independent River Song’s entire identity, including her choice of profession, is determined by her focus on the man she loves.
I’m sure some will see tonight’s episode as preaching female superiority. But if they do, they’re missing the point. The repeated message of tonight’s show was that women’s strength comes from motherhood. That line is one of the oldest arrows in patriarchy’s quiver.
In a long literary tradition, a female character is most likely to be allowed to express strength and resolve if her doing so is somehow connected to her “natural” role as familial nurturer. Think of examples from Greek tragedy: Antigone and Electra, whose heroism is triggered by their feeling for a slain relative, or even Medea, whose fairly extreme deviation from a nurturing role results from the disruption of her marriage. (Actually one can fit Lysistrata in there too.)
For the sake of the spoiler-averse, I won’t go into details about plot, but the Christmas special fit into this pattern all too well.
Mourning Becomes Rombults
More juvenilia: Murder With a Twist (short story, age 12).