[lbo-talk] Triple Your Lizard

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Jul 22 10:01:18 PDT 2009


Alan Rudy wrote:
>
> While not comprehensive, Terry Eagleton has a good book - The Idea of
> Culture - could be of some use, unlike this whole thread.

I'm sorry I never got around to that book. Could you give us some idea of its general thrust? Of course it isn't comprehensive: no book on such a sweeping topic could be. But quite often discussions of culture completely avoid _any_ attempt to state what the "it" is that they are discussing.

Despite your complaint, posters go on giving anecdotal examples of X but rigorously refusing to say what it is their examples are examples of! (This of course takes us back to Plato. And if any set of events or group of people can be arbitrarily called a culture, the term becomes as meaningless as (e.g.) "community." In fact the terms are, I suspect, linked: to speak of "A culture" one must define the community of which it is the culture.

Carrol



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