Great Courses Plus Now Offers a 30-Day Free Trial: 7,000 Video Lectures Covering Philosophy, Photography & More

in Online Courses | October 6th, 2016

We’ve told you about the Great Cours­es Plus (now called Won­dri­um) before–a new video sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that lets you watch free cours­es (about 8,000 lec­tures in total) across a wide range of sub­jects, all taught by some of the best lec­tur­ers in the coun­try. The top­ics cov­er every­thing from His­to­ry, Phi­los­o­phy, Lit­er­a­ture, and Eco­nom­ics, to Math, Sci­ence, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, Cook­ing, and Pho­tog­ra­phy. And you can binge-watch entire col­lege cours­es in a mat­ter of days by watch­ing videos on your TV, tablet, lap­top and smart phone, with the help of apps designed for Apple, Google Play, Kin­dle Fire, and Roku.

Inter­est­ed in try­ing out this ser­vice? Right now, the Great Cours­es Plus/Wondrium is offer­ing a spe­cial deal for Open Cul­ture read­ers. If you click here, and sign up for a free tri­al, you can use this ser­vice for 30 days … for free. And then, if you would like, you can con­tin­ue to sub­scribe and pay their nor­mal prices. If you have time on your hands, this is a great way to keep your mind engaged and stream what PC Mag­a­zine has called “an excel­lent library of col­lege-lev­el lec­tures.”

Note: The Great Cours­es is a part­ner with Open Cul­ture. So if you sign up for a free tri­al, it ben­e­fits not just you and Great Cours­es Plus. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

Hear Sylvia Plath’s Barely-Known Radio Play, Three Women

in Literature, Poetry, Theatre | October 5th, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Over the years, we’ve let you hear Sylvia Plath read­ing many of her poems, all writ­ten before she took her life at the age of 30. What you like­ly haven’t heard — until today — is Three Women, one of Plath’s less­er-known pieces of writ­ing. “Orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten as a radio verse dra­ma for three voic­es,” notes The Guardian, the play “was broad­cast in 1962 on the BBC Third Pro­gramme and lat­er includ­ed in Win­ter Trees, a poet­ry col­lec­tion first pub­lished in 1971.” “With its themes of preg­nan­cy, birth, mis­car­riage and adop­tion, it per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the expe­ri­ence of becom­ing — or not becom­ing — a moth­er, includ­ing all the ecsta­sy and ter­ror of child­birth.” Below you can hear a record­ing with actress Judith Binder as the wife, Ann Bern­stein as the sec­re­tary, and Rachelle Tow­ers as the girl. The pro­gram is made avail­able on Archive.org by Paci­fi­ca Radio Archives. Find more Sylvia Plath audio in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Sylvia Plath, Girl Detec­tive Offers a Hilar­i­ous­ly Cheery Take on the Poet’s Col­lege Years

David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization)

in Art, Creativity, Education, Science | September 23rd, 2016

Unless you’re a pol­i­cy geek or an edu­ca­tor, you may nev­er have heard of the “STEM vs. STEAM” debate. STEM, of course, stands for the for­mu­la of “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics” as a base­line for edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. STEAM argues for the neces­si­ty of the arts, which in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion have waxed and waned depend­ing on pre­vail­ing the­o­ry and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, polit­i­cal will. Andrew Carnegie may have donat­ed hand­some­ly to high­er edu­ca­tion, but he frowned on the study of “dead lan­guages” and oth­er use­less pur­suits. Indus­tri­al­ist Richard Teller Crane opined in 1911 that no one with “a taste for lit­er­a­ture has the right to be hap­py” because “the only men enti­tled to hap­pi­ness… are those who are use­ful.”

It’s a long way from think­ing of poets as “the unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world,” as Per­cy Shel­ley wrote in his “Defence of Poet­ry” 90 years ear­li­er, but Shelley’s essay shows that even then the arts need­ed defend­ing. By the time we get to STEM think­ing, the arts have dis­ap­peared entire­ly from the con­ver­sa­tion, become an after­thought, as ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, rather than wealthy indus­tri­al­ists, decide to trim them away from pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate invest­ment. The sit­u­a­tion may be improv­ing, as more edu­ca­tors embrace STEAM, but “there’s ten­sion,” as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the excerpt above from his StarTalk inter­view show on Nat Geo. In the kinds of fund­ing crises most school dis­tricts find them­selves in, “school boards are won­der­ing, do we cut the art, do we keep the sci­ence?”

The choice is a false one, argues for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man and some­times Cas­san­dra-like cul­tur­al the­o­rist David Byrne. “In order to real­ly suc­ceed in what­ev­er… math and the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing and things like that,” Byrne tells Tyson above, “you have to be able to think out­side the box, and do cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing… the cre­ative think­ing is in the arts. A cer­tain amount of arts edu­ca­tion…” will help you “suc­ceed more and bring more to the world… bring­ing dif­fer­ent worlds togeth­er has def­i­nite tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. To kind of cut one, or sep­a­rate them, is to injure them and crip­ple them.”

The idea goes back to Aris­to­tle, and to the cre­ation of uni­ver­si­ties, when medieval thinkers tout­ed the Lib­er­al Arts—the Triv­i­um (gram­mar, rhetoric, and log­ic) and Quadriv­i­um (arith­metic, geom­e­try, music, and astronomy)—as mod­els for a bal­anced edu­ca­tion. Tyson agrees that the arts and sci­ences should not be sev­ered: “Sup­pose they did that back in Renais­sance Europe? What would Europe be with­out the sup­port and inter­est in art?” He goes even fur­ther, say­ing, “We mea­sure the suc­cess of a civ­i­liza­tion by how well they treat their cre­ative peo­ple.”

It’s a bold state­ment that emerges from a longer con­ver­sa­tion Tyson has with Byrne, which you can hear in the StarTalk Radio pod­cast above. Tyson is joined by co-host Maeve Hig­gins and neu­ro­sci­en­tist and con­cert pianist Dr. Móni­ca López-González—and lat­er by Pro­fes­sor David Cope, who taught a com­put­er to write music, and Bill Nye. Byrne makes his case for the equal val­ue of the arts and sci­ences with per­son­al exam­ples from his ear­ly years in grade school and art col­lege, and by build­ing con­cep­tu­al bridges between the two ways of think­ing. One theme he returns to is the inter­re­la­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and music as an exam­ple of how art and engi­neer­ing co-evolve (a sub­ject on which he pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered a fas­ci­nat­ing TED talk).

You won’t find much debate here among the par­tic­i­pants. Every­one seems to read­i­ly agree with each oth­er, and I can’t say I’m sur­prised. Speak­ing anec­do­tal­ly, all of the sci­en­tists I know affirm the val­ue of the arts, and a high per­cent­age have a cre­ative avo­ca­tion. Like­wise, I’ve rarely met an artist who doesn’t val­ue sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  We find exam­ple after exam­ple of scientist-artists—from Albert Ein­stein to astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der, who sees physics in Coltrane. The cen­tral ques­tion may not be whether artists and sci­en­tists can mutu­al­ly appre­ci­ate each other—they gen­er­al­ly already do—but whether school boards, politi­cians, vot­ers, and investors can see things their way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a Free Audio Book

in | September 18th, 2016

First pub­lished in 1813, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice has become one of the most wide­ly read books in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture. When the BBC con­duct­ed a mas­sive poll in 2003, try­ing to deter­mine the “UK’s Best-Loved Book,” Pride and Prej­u­dice came in sec­ond, right behind The Lord of the Rings. And all told, some 20 mil­lion copies of the book have been sold. Through the links below, you can down­load free audio­book (and ebook) ver­sions of Pride and Prej­u­dice. 

Audio Book: Lib­rivox ver­sion – Free iTunes – Free MP3

Audio Book: Spo­ti­fy ver­sion read by Wendy Elli­son Mullen — Spo­ti­fy

eBook: iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online Now

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

700 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Hear 21 Hours of Lectures & Talks by Howard Zinn, Author of the Bestselling A People’s History of the United States

in History, Politics | September 12th, 2016

Reg­u­lar­ly in these pres­sure cook­er days we hear plau­si­ble argu­ments from lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives about how demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions have recent­ly failed us, and how unique­ly polar­ized we have become as a peo­ple. We also hear often high­ly implau­si­ble claims about how cur­rent con­tenders intend to restore some kind of jus­tice or fair­ness. Read­ers of Howard Zinn’s A People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States will have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, one in which sup­pos­ed­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions were nev­er designed to work for the major­i­ty of the country’s inhab­i­tants. And in which, by design, cer­tain minori­ties have always remained at the bot­tom of the hier­ar­chy.

“There is not a coun­try in world his­to­ry,” writes Zinn in his famous rad­i­cal his­to­ry, “in which racism has been more impor­tant, for so long a time, as the Unit­ed States.” Far from a flawed yet excep­tion­al form of gov­ern­ment, the U.S.  sys­tem, Zinn argued, began as a means by which the founders seized the pre­rog­a­tives of the British for them­selves, with no inten­tion of expand­ing these lib­er­ties wide­ly. On the con­trary. As Zinn puts it in a chap­ter called “Tyran­ny is Tyran­ny”:

Around 1776, cer­tain impor­tant peo­ple in the Eng­lish colonies made a dis­cov­ery that would prove enor­mous­ly use­ful for the next two hun­dred years. They found that by cre­at­ing a nation, a sym­bol, a legal uni­ty called the Unit­ed States, they could take over land, prof­its, and polit­i­cal pow­er from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a num­ber of poten­tial rebel­lions and cre­ate a con­sen­sus of pop­u­lar sup­port for the rule of a new, priv­i­leged lead­er­ship.

The Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion swapped out one rule by elites for anoth­er, in oth­er words, and one empire for anoth­er. Or as Zinn wrote in his mem­oir, there is “some­thing rot­ten at the root.” Those who object to Zinn’s work may find flaws in his schol­ar­ly method­ol­o­gy. Accu­sa­tions of bias, however—even couched in polite pejo­ra­tives like “polem­i­cal” and “revisionist”—are pret­ty much moot. Zinn, who died in 2010, would agree. The neces­si­ty of tak­ing a posi­tion, after all, was inte­gral to the his­to­ri­an and activist’s entire ethos, such that he titled his auto­bi­og­ra­phy You Can’t Be Neu­tral on a Mov­ing Train. “The state and its police were not neu­tral ref­er­ees in a soci­ety of con­tend­ing inter­ests,” wrote Zinn, “They were on the side of the rich and pow­er­ful.” He always made it plain whose side he took, an approach by nature con­tro­ver­sial.

Was he a lib­er­al par­ti­san? Hard­ly. After tak­ing a beat­ing by police at a protest, Zinn writes, “I was no longer a lib­er­al, a believ­er in the self-cor­rect­ing char­ac­ter of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. I was a rad­i­cal, believ­ing that some­thing fun­da­men­tal was wrong in this coun­try.” A Com­mu­nist? “Marx,” wrote Zinn, “was often wrong, often dog­mat­ic… too insis­tent that the indus­tri­al work­ing class must be the agent of rev­o­lu­tion.” Zinn admired Marx. He wrote a play about him, Marx in Soho, and describes in the for­ward how his ear­ly read­ing of Marx, while grow­ing up in work­ing-class Brook­lyn, great­ly influ­enced his view of the world.

But after “grow­ing evi­dence of the hor­rors of Stal­in­ism” and his expe­ri­ence with the grass­roots “par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy” of the Stu­dent Non­vi­o­lent Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (SNCC), Zinn became drawn to anar­chism. Decid­ed­ly left­ist and fun­da­men­tal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an, Zinn’s analy­sis has proven broad enough to war­rant admi­ra­tion from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal per­sua­sions: from mod­ern lib­er­als to Marx­ists to lib­er­tar­i­an com­mu­nists to free mar­ket lib­er­tar­i­ans like Rea­son’s Thad­deus Rus­sell, who pro­nounced him “no bet­ter exem­plar of that thor­ough­go­ing, anti-sta­tist left.”

Like anoth­er famous anar­chist intel­lec­tu­al of the rad­i­cal cam­pus left, Noam Chom­sky, Zinn first came to nation­al promi­nence in the 60s while orga­niz­ing protests against the Viet­nam War—and like Chom­sky, he debat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive stan­dard-bear­er William F. Buck­ley. Zinn pre­vi­ous­ly protest­ed seg­re­ga­tion with SNCC while he taught at Spel­man Col­lege, writ­ing an influ­en­tial his­to­ry of the orga­ni­za­tion. His tire­less activism con­tin­ued until the very end of his life, and he deliv­ered notable speech­es and lec­tures through­out his involve­ment in the civ­il rights, anti-war, envi­ron­men­tal, and eco­nom­ic jus­tice move­ments.

In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, you can hear 22 of those talks for a total of 21 hours of Zinn, includ­ing that his­toric Buck­ley debate, which you can also hear in full at the top of the post. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) After their Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty meet­ing, notes Ed Welchel, Zinn reflect­ed, “I found it curi­ous that Buck­ley did not seem to under­stand that unspar­ing crit­i­cism of gov­ern­ment is an essen­tial ele­ment of a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.”

The playlist of Zinn lec­tures and talks will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Illus­trat­ed Video: Howard Zinn’s “What the Class­room Didn’t Teach Me About the Amer­i­can Empire”

Adorn Your Gar­den with Howard the Zinn Monk

Noam Chom­sky vs. William F. Buck­ley, 1969

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Makes Vertigo the Best Film of All Time? Four Video Essays (and Martin Scorsese) Explain

in Film | September 7th, 2016

Ver­ti­go is the great­est motion pic­ture of all time. Or so say the results of the lat­est round of respect­ed film mag­a­zine Sight & Sound’s long-run­ning crit­ics poll, in which Alfred Hitch­cock­’s James Stew­art- and Kim Novak- (and San Fran­cis­co-) star­ring psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller unseat­ed Cit­i­zen Kane from the top spot. For half a cen­tu­ry, Orson Welles’ direc­to­r­i­al debut seemed like it would for­ev­er occu­py the head of the cin­e­mat­ic table, its sta­tus dis­put­ed only by the unim­pressed mod­ern view­ers who, hav­ing attend­ed a revival screen­ing or hap­pened across it on tele­vi­sion, com­plain that they don’t under­stand all the crit­i­cal fuss. The new cham­pi­on has giv­en them a dif­fer­ent ques­tion to ask: what makes Ver­ti­go so great, any­way?

Like Cit­i­zen Kane in 1941, Ver­ti­go flopped at the box office in 1958, but Hitch­cock­’s film drew more neg­a­tive reviews, its crit­ics sound­ing baf­fled, dis­mis­sive, or both. Even Welles report­ed­ly dis­liked it, and Hitch­cock kept it out of cir­cu­la­tion him­self between 1973 and his death in 1980, a peri­od when cinephiles — and cinephile-film­mak­ers, such as a cer­tain well-known Ver­ti­go enthu­si­ast called Mar­tin Scors­ese — regard­ed it as a sacred doc­u­ment. Only in 1984 did Ver­ti­go re-emerge, by which point it bad­ly need­ed an exten­sive audio­vi­su­al restora­tion. It received just that in 1996, speed­ing up its ascent to acclaim, in progress at least since it first appeared on the Sight & Sound poll, in eighth place, in 1982.

“Why, after watch­ing Ver­ti­go more than, say, 30 times, are we con­fi­dent that there are things to dis­cov­er in it — that some aspects remain ambigu­ous and uncer­tain, unfath­omably com­plex, even if we scru­ti­nize every look, every cut, every move­ment of the cam­era?” asks crit­ic Miguel Marías in an essay on the film at Sight & Sound. He lists many rea­sons, and many more exist than that. But nobody can appre­ci­ate a work with so many pure­ly cin­e­mat­ic strengths with­out actu­al­ly watch­ing it, which per­haps makes the video essay a bet­ter form for exam­in­ing the pow­er of what we have come to rec­og­nize as Hitch­cock­’s mas­ter­piece.

“Only one film had been capa­ble of por­tray­ing impos­si­ble mem­o­ry — insane mem­o­ry,” says the nar­ra­tor of Chris Mark­er’s essay film Sans Soleil: “Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go.” B. Kite and Alexan­der Points-Zol­lo’s three-part “Ver­ti­go Vari­a­tions” at the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image uses Mark­er’s inter­pre­ta­tion, as well as many oth­ers, to see from as many angles as pos­si­ble Hitch­cock­’s “impos­si­ble object: a gim­crack plot stud­ded with strange gaps that nonethe­less rides a pulse of pecu­liar neces­si­ty, a field of asso­ci­a­tion that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly expands and con­tracts like its famous trick shot, a ghost sto­ry whose spir­its linger even after hav­ing been appar­ent­ly explained away, and a study of obses­sion that becomes an obses­sive object in its own right.”

The pop­u­lar explain­er known as the Nerd­writer looks at how Hitch­cock blocks a scene by break­ing down the vis­it by Stew­art’s trau­ma­tized, retired police detec­tive pro­tag­o­nist to the office of a for­mer col­lege class­mate turned ship­build­ing mag­nate. The con­ver­sa­tion they have sets the sto­ry in motion, and Hitch­cock took the place­ment of his actors and his cam­era in each and every shot as seri­ous­ly as he took every oth­er aspect of the film. Col­or, for instance: anoth­er video essay­ist, work­ing under the ban­ner of Soci­ety of Geeks, iden­ti­fies Hitch­cock­’s use of rich Tech­ni­col­or as a mech­a­nism to height­en the emo­tions, with, as crit­ic Jim Emer­son writes it, “red sug­gest­ing Scot­tie’s fear/caution/hesitancy when it comes to romance, and its oppo­site green, sug­gest­ing the Edenic bliss (and/or watery obliv­ion) of his infat­u­a­tion.” Ava Burke iso­lates anoth­er of Hitch­cock­’s visu­al devices in use: the mir­ror­ing that fills the view­ing expe­ri­ence with visu­al echoes both faint and loud.

When he got to work on Ver­ti­go, Hitch­cock had already made more than forty films in just over three decades as a film­mak­er. Though often labeled a “mas­ter of sus­pense” dur­ing his life­time, he instinc­tive­ly learned and deeply inter­nal­ized a vast range of film­mak­ing tech­niques that film schol­ars, as well as his suc­ces­sors in film­mak­ing, con­tin­ue to take apart, scru­ti­nize, and put back togeth­er again. This most re-watch­able of his pic­tures (and one that, accord­ing to sev­er­al of the crit­ics and video essay­ists here, trans­forms utter­ly upon the sec­ond view­ing) makes use of the full spec­trum of Hitch­cock­’s mas­tery as well as the full spec­trum of his fix­a­tions. Whether or not you con­sid­er it the great­est motion pic­ture of all time, if you love the art of cin­e­ma, you by def­i­n­i­tion love Ver­ti­go.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

The Eyes of Hitch­cock: A Mes­mer­iz­ing Video Essay on the Expres­sive Pow­er of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

5 Hours of Free Alfred Hitch­cock Inter­views: Dis­cov­er His The­o­ries of Film Edit­ing, Cre­at­ing Sus­pense & More

Aban­doned Alter­nate Titles for Two Great Films: Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animated Introduction to French Philosopher Jacques Derrida

in Philosophy | September 5th, 2016

Since the bold arrival of his book Of Gram­ma­tol­ogy in 1967, French philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da has been understood—or misunderstood—as many things: a rad­i­cal rel­a­tivist who ”rejects all of meta­phys­i­cal his­to­ry,” a fash­ion­able intel­lec­tu­al play­ing lan­guage games, a bril­liant phe­nom­e­nol­o­gist of lan­guage…. One asso­ci­a­tion he vehe­ment­ly reject­ed was with the kind of iron­ic, lais­sez faire post­mod­ernism rep­re­sent­ed by Sein­feld. But when it came to clar­i­fy­ing his work for puz­zled read­ers and onlook­ers, Der­ri­da could seem as will­ful­ly, frus­trat­ing­ly eva­sive in per­son as he was on the page. His work, writes Williams Col­lege pro­fes­sor Mark C. Tay­lor, can “seem hope­less­ly obscure… to peo­ple addict­ed to sound bites and overnight polls.”

Most peo­ple famil­iar with some of Derrida’s work know a few key terms of his thought: dif­férance, trace, apo­r­ia, phar­makon. Those who’ve only heard the name prob­a­bly know only one: Decon­struc­tion, a “way of doing phi­los­o­phy,” says Alain de Bot­ton in his video intro­duc­tion to Der­ri­da above, that “fun­da­men­tal­ly altered our under­stand­ing of many aca­d­e­m­ic fields, espe­cial­ly lit­er­ary stud­ies.” But what exact­ly is “Decon­struc­tion”? Rather than a method, Der­ri­da him­self described it as a process already occur­ring with­in a writ­ten work, one we can observe when we “do not assume that what is con­di­tioned by his­to­ry, insti­tu­tions, or soci­ety is nat­ur­al.” 

Derrida’s med­i­ta­tions on the inabil­i­ty of lan­guage to con­tain or com­mu­ni­cate nat­ur­al or meta­phys­i­cal truth devel­oped in unique life cir­cum­stances. Born into a Jew­ish fam­i­ly in French colo­nial Alge­ria in 1930, the philoso­pher grew up very con­scious of “hav­ing been in an infe­ri­or posi­tion at the nexus of three dif­fer­ent reli­gions, Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Islam, all of which claimed to speak the truth,” says de Bot­ton. Upon arriv­ing in Paris to study in 1949, Der­ri­da found him­self even fur­ther on the social mar­gins. “Though Der­ri­da was not an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writer, it’s hard not to read his work as a response to big­otry and exclu­sion.”

The claim that the philosopher—whose name has almost become syn­ony­mous with post-mod­ernism, for good or ill—was not an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writer may seem strange to some. One of his most-read books in col­lege cours­es, Mono­lin­gual­ism of the Oth­er, pro­ceeds from an inves­ti­ga­tion into his fraught rela­tion­ship with the French lan­guage because of his upbring­ing as a reli­gious minor­i­ty in a Euro­pean colony. Lat­er, Der­ri­da deliv­ered a ten-hour address to a con­fer­ence called The Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Ani­mal, pub­lished posthu­mous­ly (and excerpt­ed here).

Nonethe­less, Der­ri­da would not have made much of his place as the author, this being only a rhetor­i­cal occa­sion for analy­sis. Der­ri­da, writes Nazenin Ruso at Phi­los­o­phy Now, argued that “once the text is writ­ten, the author’s input los­es its sig­nif­i­cance.” The per­son of the author—his or her phys­i­cal pres­ence, bio­graph­i­cal expe­ri­ences, emo­tions, desires, and intentions—becomes irre­triev­able for read­ers, one of many absences in the text that we mis­take for pres­ence.

It’s hard to see, then, how we can speak of what Derrida’s “hope” was for his read­ers’ self-improve­ment, as de Bot­ton says in his video intro­duc­tion. This being the School of Life, we are treat­ed to a rather util­i­tar­i­an read­ing of the philoso­pher, one he would per­haps reject. But Der­ri­da bris­tled at the idea that lan­guage could suf­fice to tell us how and who to be in the world. His sus­pi­cion of logo­cen­trism, “an over-hasty, naïve devo­tion to rea­son, log­ic, and clear def­i­n­i­tion,” says de Bot­ton, means he felt that “many of the most impor­tant things we feel can nev­er be expressed in words.” To hear Der­ri­da talk about the prob­lem of priv­i­leg­ing lan­guage over oth­er means of expres­sion with an artist who unique­ly agreed with his posi­tion, read his inter­view with jazz great Ornette Cole­man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s Col­lege Admis­sion Essay on Shake­speare “Quite Incom­pre­hen­si­ble” (1951)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The History of Russia in 70,000 Photos: New Photo Archive Presents Russian History from 1860 to 1999

in History, Photography | September 2nd, 2016

Back in col­lege, I took a sur­vey class on Russ­ian his­to­ry, taught by one of these peo­ple who take up the pro­fes­sion in their active retire­ment after a career spent work­ing in the field. This par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sor had gone to work for the State Depart­ment after grad­u­ate school and served in var­i­ous posts in Sovi­et Rus­sia for sev­er­al decades. The for­mat of his class seemed unre­mark­able on paper. One stan­dard syl­labus, one bulky, expen­sive text­book. But the class­es them­selves con­sist­ed of long, fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries about per­son­al encoun­ters with Brezh­nev and Gor­bachev, or jour­neys into ancient Kiev, or to the out­er reach­es of the Steppes.

All that was miss­ing from those vivid rec­ol­lec­tions was a com­pa­ra­ble pho­to essay to tell the sto­ry visu­al­ly. This has been reme­died and then some by the “The His­to­ry of Rus­sia,” an enor­mous joint archive project from Moscow’s Mul­ti­me­dia Art Muse­um and Yan­dex, Russia’s largest search engine. The archive con­tains over 70,000 pho­tos, gath­ered from “more than 40 insti­tu­tions and col­lec­tions,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, and rep­re­sent­ing “over 150 years of pho­tographs cap­tur­ing all sorts of scenes of Russ­ian life.”

Non-Russ­ian speak­ers can load the site in Google Chrome and have it trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. Addi­tion­al­ly, “a time­line allows you to browse by date, a map enables loca­tion-based search­es, and pre­set cat­e­gories fil­ter the images by theme.” Russ­ian speak­ers can enter spe­cif­ic key­words into the site’s search engine. Cur­rent­ly, the archive fea­tures an exhi­bi­tion on the August Putsch, the 1991 coup attempt on the pres­i­den­cy of Mikhail Gor­bachev, staged by hard-line Com­mu­nist Par­ty Mem­bers opposed to reform. See one icon­ic pho­to of that his­tor­i­cal event above, and many more at the vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion.

The late 1980s and 90s may be a peri­od of par­tic­u­lar inter­est for stu­dents and writ­ers of Russ­ian his­to­ry, like David Rem­nick, and for good rea­son. But every decade in the archive holds its own fas­ci­na­tion. State­ly por­traits from the 1860s, like that at the top of the post, show us the soci­ety of Tol­stoy in the decade he seri­al­ized War and Peace. Pho­tos from the 20s, like the satir­i­cal dis­play in Red Square, fur­ther down, show us the days of Lenin’s rule and the ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union. Images from the 50s give us unique insid­er views—often impos­si­ble at the time—of ordi­nary Sovi­et life at the height of the Cold War, such as the Christ­mas tree in the Luzh­ni­ki Sta­di­um, above, or the man lead­ing an ele­phant from the Red Army The­ater, below.

The 60s in par­tic­u­lar look like a Life mag­a­zine spread, with dra­mat­ic pho­tos of Olympic ath­letes in train­ing, states­men posed with wives and chil­dren, and hun­dreds of arrest­ing pic­tures from every­day life, like that of two boys box­ing below. The huge gal­leries can be a lit­tle cum­ber­some to nav­i­gate and require some patience on the part of the non-Russ­ian-speak­ing user. But that patience is rich­ly reward­ed with pho­to­graph after pho­to­graph of a coun­try we rarely hear spo­ken of in less than inflam­ma­to­ry terms. We encounter, of course, the odd por­trait of Stal­in and oth­er well-worn pro­pa­gan­da images, but for the most part, the pho­tos look and feel can­did, and for good rea­son.

“Accord­ing to a release,” Hyper­al­ler­gic writes, “many of the pho­tographs are pub­lished here for the first time, part­ly because the por­tal invites users to upload, describe, and tag images from per­son­al archives. It has the feel of a muse­um collection”—and also of a fam­i­ly pho­to album stretch­ing back gen­er­a­tions. “The His­to­ry of Rus­sia” archive offers occa­sion­al con­text in addi­tion to the dates, names, and loca­tions of sub­jects. But infor­ma­tive text appears rarely, and in near­ly unread­able trans­la­tions for us non-speak­ers. Nonethe­less, a few hours lost in these gal­leries feel like a near total immer­sion in Russ­ian his­to­ry. You can enter the archive here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Col­or Por­trait of Leo Tol­stoy, and Oth­er Amaz­ing Col­or Pho­tos of Czarist Rus­sia (1908)

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Down­load 650 Sovi­et Book Cov­ers, Many Sport­ing Won­der­ful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Nirvana Perform “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Just Days After the Release of Nevermind (1991)

in Music | September 1st, 2016

It’s hard to imag­ine a time when Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” didn’t belong to all of us. One day it didn’t exist. And then one day it did, and for so many of us who heard that churn­ing open­ing chord, that was it. Maybe it took one lis­ten, or five, but it was clear this song was going to mean some­thing. And as the autumn of 1991 wore on, it would take on the weight of many things—expectations of a new gen­er­a­tion, a new decade, the end of hair met­al, the begin­ning of grunge, the return of rock, or just as cor­rect­ly, rock’s last gasp.

The song was released to radio sta­tions in August, issued as a sin­gle on Sep­tem­ber 10, 1991, and then offi­cial­ly released on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1991. But “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” real­ly broke a month lat­er, when MTV pre­miered it on 120 Min­utes. Then the band watched as it became a day­time MTV hit, then a hit on every rock radio playlist, from “mod­ern rock” to “col­lege rock” and all the mar­ket­ing divi­sions in between.

The above video shows the band play­ing the song before any of this hap­pened, just two days after the release of Nev­er­mind. As Jason Kot­tke said on his site when he post­ed this, “There’s a freight train bear­ing down on those boys and they don’t even know it.”

The per­for­mance comes from a gig at The Moon in New Haven, Con­necti­cut (see it all above), the band play­ing on a small stage, with such a low ceil­ing that bassist Krist Novosel­ic looks like he’s going to bang his head on the ceil­ing. The audi­ence is one huge mosh pit, all male, it seems, and you can smell the sweat and stale beer through the screen. Did the crowd know they were see­ing a band on the cusp? Is it too much to read into that yelp from the audi­ence, dur­ing the sec­ond qui­et pas­sage, that they’re wit­ness­ing a fine­ly con­struct­ed hit, the kind of loud-soft dynam­ic that would be copied and echoed through the nineties.

By April of the fol­low­ing year the song would be so pop­u­lar Weird Al Yankovic would have made his par­o­dy ver­sion (one of his best). And soon Kurt Cobain would be swal­lowed by fame, see­ing only a few ways out of his predica­ment. But here they are for a brief moment in time, per­haps think­ing that there would be more clubs like The Moon, just a bit big­ger, maybe just a bit small­er, on the hori­zon.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s Last Con­cert: Audio/ Video Record­ed on March 1, 1994

Kurt Cobain’s Home Demos: Ear­ly Ver­sions of Nir­vana Hits, and Nev­er-Released Songs

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Robin Williams Uses His Stand-Up Comedy Genius to Deliver a 1983 Commencement Speech

in Comedy, Education, Law | August 11th, 2016

Law school grad­u­ates always ask them­selves the same ques­tion: after all this, what have I learned? The com­mence­ment speak­er at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Hast­ings Col­lege of Law’s class of 1983 told them exact­ly what they’d learned. “You’ve learned to hear at twice the speed of sound, lis­ten­ing to the crim­i­nal law lec­tures of Amy Wil­son,” he said, to loud applause and laugh­ter. And “who will ever for­get pro­fes­sor Rudy Schlesinger? They say the man is a won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of Wal­ter Bren­nan and Otto Pre­minger.” He then launch­es into not just an impres­sion of the pro­fes­sor call­ing on one of his stu­dents, but the stu­dent as well.

Few com­mence­ment speak­ers can keep their audi­ence in stitch­es, much less throw out a wide range of cul­tur­al ref­er­ences at the same time — and do all the voic­es. Robin Williams could, and while the stu­dents to whom he deliv­ered the ten-minute talk above receive it as a tour de force, the rest of us can study it as an exam­ple of how to craft a speech with your audi­ence in mind. Not only did the young San Fran­cis­can come­di­an, then just out of his career-mak­ing role on Mork & Mindy, quick­ly estab­lish his local cred­i­bil­i­ty (at one point refer­ring to the school as “UC Ten­der­loin”), he filled his remarks, swerv­ing from high to low and dialect to dialect, with jokes only a Hast­ings stu­dent would get.

“ ‘He spent sev­er­al days on cam­pus prepar­ing,’ remem­bers one alum­na,” accord­ing to the video’s notes, “and offered up flaw­less, hilar­i­ous par­o­dies of both stu­dents and fac­ul­ty mem­bers as part of a mes­sage about the val­ue of edu­ca­tion and the impor­tance of the legal sys­tem in soci­ety.” Hast­ings’ grad­u­at­ing class­es get to choose their own com­mence­ment speak­ers, and 1983’s chose Williams with vir­tu­al una­nim­i­ty. Know­ing his com­ic per­sona from tele­vi­sion, movies, and stand-up, they sure­ly knew he’d turn up and make them laugh. But how many could have imag­ined that he would so hand­i­ly demon­strate that knowl­edge is, indeed, pow­er? All of them can now rest assured that Williams, who died two years ago today, has become the most in-demand speak­er in that great San Fran­cis­co Civic Aud­to­ri­um in the sky.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

Robin Williams & Bob­by McFer­rin Sing Fun Cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ “Come Togeth­er”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.