Notes from the academy

[rivkat]

So, in the latest go-round on racism, reader response, and the like, I have very little useful to say. The one thing that I haven’t seen much discussion on--though I haven’t waded into many comment threads, so I might just have missed it--is about the false opposition between rational/academic/literary analysis and emotional/political response, specifically about what it means to have emotions. Anyone who tells you that they aren’t responding emotionally to anything they have spent the time to analyze has made a mistake. Emotion/reason is a common dualism (and therefore it’s never surprising to find it mapped onto power hierarchies). But no rational judgment can be made without emotion. This isn’t exaggeration: without emotion to tell us what to value, weighing factors with perfect accuracy is useless. A person engaging in what she calls “analysis” as opposed to “reaction” may be responding with emotion so well accommodated by prevailing structures that it looks to her like computer logic. But emotion is behind any analysis. For an overview of the relevant neuro/psychological research, the first half of this paper by David Arkush covers a lot of ground. (It’s law-oriented, but it’s also the most recent thing I read on the subject so it’s an easy cite.)

James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind: You can download a copy for free. This book is the latest in a round of popularizing the challenges of intellectual property protection in a networked world; Boyle is one of our most prominent low-protectionists. He's not quite the writer that Larry Lessig is, but he's pretty good, and the book serves as a fun, solid introduction to our current situation. Elegant explanation of synthetic biology and its patent discontents. Those already familiar with the basics probably won't learn much, but should consider checking out Boyle's Shamans, Software, and Spleens, a more theoretically oriented work that I like a lot but is sadly as yet not fully available online.