tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24937508.post6628715950249006493..comments2023-07-12T08:33:43.253-04:00Comments on Holy Prepuce!: Adam Wheeler, Conceptual ArtistHoly Prepucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13412338463895874903noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24937508.post-9152476269384015352013-07-01T14:44:21.649-04:002013-07-01T14:44:21.649-04:00I recognize that you wrote this post three years a...I recognize that you wrote this post three years ago and the blog is now defunct, but I can't help but comment! Also, I don't want to sound like Mr Spock--I get D.B.'s assessment of the piece as "the masterful skewering of self-fulfilling pretentiousness that is higher education." HOWEVER! as a modernist, it behooves me to point out that the abstract for Mappings, Unmappings, and Remappings is not "complete nonsense" but a very sound summary of critical modernism. Wheeler stole it from Ondrea E Ackerman's diss abstract. (Ackerman got her PhD from Columbia U and is now tenure track at Oklahoma SU, which is a great landing in these brutal times.) Credentials aside, to a modernist's eyes as opposed to a lawyer's (albeit it a Harvard educated, actor-turned lawyer), the piece is smoothly-written prose well-situated within current thinking about literary modernism but still interesting. It engages with the "difficulty" of modernist texts that so turn off readers today by arguing that the the intentional confusion that many experience as elitist is actually humanitarian--in contrast to Enlightenment thinking that sees knowledge as a commodity, modernism in Ackerman's view sees institutional knowledge as providing very little help in navigating the madhouse that is authentic life. I look forward to the book being published!jennyghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14614793777208387747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24937508.post-69916766082760981082010-06-01T23:30:54.834-04:002010-06-01T23:30:54.834-04:00If anyone should be accused of conceptual artistry...If anyone should be accused of conceptual artistry, it is you, H.P., for the masterful skewering of self-fulfilling pretentiousness that is higher education.<br /><br />Which reminds me of a joke: at a grocery store in the Boston/Cambridge area, a young man pushed his highly overloaded cart into the '15 items or Less' lane and began unloading onto the conveyor belt. The manager allowed the obvious faux pas to the consternation of the elderly woman next in line who repeatedly motioned to the sign above the check out lane. Upon the young man's departure, the manager turned to the upset lady and said, "He's either from Harvard and can't count, or M.I.T. and can't read."<br /><br />~db~Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com