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fpbAs anyone can imagine, I have long had an Amazon account, which I used from time to time to purchase really rare hard-to-find items, or to treat myself when I've a little money to blow. (Nothing makes you feel better, fast, than a new book on a subject you love.) However, there had been some confusion a while back. Now I find that I have a new account with a nickname I did not want ("badnews") and that I cannot access my old one ("F.P.Barbieri") to publish a review. Well, what the heck, I published as Badnews. But I'm reprinting it here, just to show that it is mine.
Antiquities: Postwar French Thought, Volume III by Gregory Nagy, Nicole Loraux, Laura M. Slatkin, and Ramona Naddaff (Hardcover - May 2001)
Buy new: $40.00
title: Postwar French thought on the antiquities? Don't make me laugh
In fact, I had intended to start with an obscenity. But never mind. Post-war French thought on ancient cultures and anthropology has been vital, creative and central to any future effort in any related field, but you could never tell from this collection. More like "As Much Postwar French Thought on the Antiquities as the Tender, Easily-Wounded Little Heads of Contemporary American Undergraduates are Supposed to Be Able to Bear." To begin with, it is wildly reorientated, away from its main concerns and most successful areas of interpretation - the use of structural thought to interpret mythology and ritual, the interpretation of social institutions through interpreted myth, the connection with Indo-European and other cultures) to areas in which the classic French post-war writers showed little interest and did not do central work (gender, gender, gender, and did I mention gender?) but which happen to obsess contemporary American academia. And then there is the truly shocking omission of Levy-Strauss and Dumezil. To pretend to give an account of French thought on ancient civilization without giving these two giants a central place is really like playing Hamlet without the Prince: it removes the central energy of tahe whole environment. But then, Levy-Strauss is often un-PC (and Jewish to boot) and Dumezil was known to be conservative, and we cannot have such persons polluting the minds of our oh-so-progressive students. All right, we can make the excuse that they were not, strictly speaking, classicists: Levy-Strauss was an anthropologist, Dumezil an Indo-Europeanist. But if that were to be the case, why in the name of Hell and damnation do they insert Derrida, who was even less of a classicist, and did so, at that, at the very end, as if given the task of summing up the whole? This collection is a misguided, misrepresenting disgrace, and a blot on the otherwise impressive record of joint editor Gregory Nagy. To be avoided at all costs: better to be honestly ignorant of the subject, and know you are, than to plough your way through this overpriced volume and come out with the deceptive impression of having been informed.
Antiquities: Postwar French Thought, Volume III by Gregory Nagy, Nicole Loraux, Laura M. Slatkin, and Ramona Naddaff (Hardcover - May 2001)
Buy new: $40.00
title: Postwar French thought on the antiquities? Don't make me laugh
In fact, I had intended to start with an obscenity. But never mind. Post-war French thought on ancient cultures and anthropology has been vital, creative and central to any future effort in any related field, but you could never tell from this collection. More like "As Much Postwar French Thought on the Antiquities as the Tender, Easily-Wounded Little Heads of Contemporary American Undergraduates are Supposed to Be Able to Bear." To begin with, it is wildly reorientated, away from its main concerns and most successful areas of interpretation - the use of structural thought to interpret mythology and ritual, the interpretation of social institutions through interpreted myth, the connection with Indo-European and other cultures) to areas in which the classic French post-war writers showed little interest and did not do central work (gender, gender, gender, and did I mention gender?) but which happen to obsess contemporary American academia. And then there is the truly shocking omission of Levy-Strauss and Dumezil. To pretend to give an account of French thought on ancient civilization without giving these two giants a central place is really like playing Hamlet without the Prince: it removes the central energy of tahe whole environment. But then, Levy-Strauss is often un-PC (and Jewish to boot) and Dumezil was known to be conservative, and we cannot have such persons polluting the minds of our oh-so-progressive students. All right, we can make the excuse that they were not, strictly speaking, classicists: Levy-Strauss was an anthropologist, Dumezil an Indo-Europeanist. But if that were to be the case, why in the name of Hell and damnation do they insert Derrida, who was even less of a classicist, and did so, at that, at the very end, as if given the task of summing up the whole? This collection is a misguided, misrepresenting disgrace, and a blot on the otherwise impressive record of joint editor Gregory Nagy. To be avoided at all costs: better to be honestly ignorant of the subject, and know you are, than to plough your way through this overpriced volume and come out with the deceptive impression of having been informed.
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Date: 2011-02-21 11:58 pm (UTC)