Renoir and Slumming - Thinking Allowed

BBC's Thinking Allowed had its program last week entirely dedicated to Slumming. This is the term for upper and middle class white, mostly men, mingle with the lower class, mostly colored women in the jazz scene of the US during the early twentieth century.

The guests on the program make clear how this has created a kind of openness between the races and classes as well paved the way for new developments in culture, mostly music. Yet, the indignation of class difference still was strongly playing its role. The phenomenon was dealt with as a purely American one, but I thought of Paris.

I thought of Paris, thanks to the podfaded Art History lectures by William Bryson in 2008 (UCSD) - Formations of Modern Art. Also in Paris there was the phenomenon upper class men went for their leisure to the lower class areas and mingled with, mostly, lower class women. This has been made visible most notably by the painter Renoir. In Renoir's vision, these are scenes of great joy, but what joy is that? Just like with slumming, it is cheap entertainment for the men and a chance of social mobility for the women. The double entendre is inevitable.

More Thinking Allowed:
Mizrahi Jews,
The weekly social science stop,
Substance and Sociology,
Hole in the Wall,
Moral relativism.

Leisure listening with Nilpod

I have reviewed Nilpod before and I wrote something that has been more or less refuted by my own behavior. I thought the Irish podcast Nilpod would wear off really fast. How long can you listen to two guys conversing away?

The facts are though, that over the last weeks, every time I saw a new Nilpod chapter was out, I went out and listened. And had a good time. Especially this last episode, which is about primary school (mp3), was rather good. It combines fascinating memories of speakers Nick and Wil with the fact they are teachers themselves today and the uproar about the Irish schools recently. This makes that the conversation receives a lot of additional meaning.

In the end, Nilpod is a leisure podcast. I listen to it while going about stuff that cannot be combined with the kind of academic podcasts I usually listen to. I used to listen to radio like that. In this respect it is more than radio, but I'd choose Nilpod rather than radio and that is telling something.

More conversation podcasts:
First Nilpod review,
Real Talk.

Omniculturalism - LSE lecture

It is not a new policy problem. The Romans had to deal with it. The Ottomans had their methods: incorporating different cultures into one state. The modern name is multiculturalism or assimilation? Neither seem to be viable. At the London School of Economics (LSE Public Lectures and Events) Professor Fathali Moghaddam was invited to present his alternative coined Omniculturalism.

Moghaddam first of all makes a point of showing how neither multiculturalism nor assimilation can be successful. Multiculturalism, as it accepts difference, is just too naive - we all know that. But Moghaddam's strength is how he shows very convincingly the fatal conceptual weakness of multiculturalism; how it cannot work psychologically and how it is too relativistic. Similarly he defeats assimilation.

His alternative omniculturalism seems to me closer to multiculturalism, just a little less naive. In stead of putting all the differences cheerfully in the forefront, omniculturalism begins by stating what people have in common. It argues that education should be based on that and only secondarily, and inevitably, we will find our differences, but having started from common ground, it will be easier to accept each other and resolve conflict.

More LSE Events:
Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change,
Nudge: decision architecture,
The EU and the Middle East,
The British Mandate in Palestine,
Iran Today.

Surviving those family dinners on the holidays

The stories of the fictional podcast Namaste Stories (feed) have a surrealist feel, but they seem profoundly real as well, autobiographical perhaps. In any case, there is a persistent personal perspective in these stories by Dave P.



In the last story (Wall of Gurus), I could very much sympathize with him. It was a Thanksgiving Dinner with the extended family; the posed idyll, the obligations of the occasion, the codes of good manners. In short the tensions rises to a breaking point and it starts to take tremendous efforts not to led this forced togetherness explode into a raging row. It could be Christmas or Passover just the same. What's up next? Shavuot - the vicious cycle never stops.

More Namaste and Dave P:
The new direction of Dave P,
New York Coffee Cup,
Namaste Stories, podcast as an art,
Namaste Stories, fiction podcast.

Holocaust - History 1c

UCLA's History 1c, in dealing with modern history has to deal with the Holocaust among others, which is a subject big enough to spend an entire lecture series on. I have seen other general history courses struggle with this. The holocaust cannot be set aside or even briefly mentioned, yet when one begins, in the end, never enough has been said. Professor Lynn Hunt, however, in the one designated lecture (the May 19th lecture), has done an impressive job in capturing all dimensions of the holocaust.

She kicks of with John Cage's piece 4'33" indicating how words fall short and by the end, after a full wordy lecture she makes full circle with John Cage. By then she has described the cultural impact, the philosophical impact (Hannah Arendt!) as well as the historic impact including the statistics. It was the best lecture about the Shoah as part of a general course I have ever heard.

On the subject of the statistics one detail stuck out for me: she presented as a fact that 60% of Dutch Jewry did not survive the Shoah. It is a figure that I have always learned to be much higher (up to 80%). I have mailed her a question about this and hope to be able to report back with an answer.

More History 1c:
Nietzsche in a nutshell,
Industrialization and Italian unification,
History since 1715.

Gelogen over zijn leeftijd - veertien achttien recensie

Aan het eind van de laatste aflevering van Veertien Achttien weet je het niet meer. Ligt in het besproken graf in Poelcappelle nu werkelijk John Condon, of iemand anders? Het zou best iemand anders kunnen zijn, maar feit blijft dat Condon in de oorlog gebleven is. Op de prille leeftijd van 14 jaar.

Natuurlijk werden er geen veertienjarigen geronseld in Kitchener's Army, maar toen er om vrijwilligers werd gevraagd, waren er vele jongens wie de oorlog trok. En zij die te jong waren, probeerden over hun leeftijd te liegen. Verteller Tom Tacken geeft een aantal redenen waarom de jonge Ier Condon in de Grote Oorlog wilde dienen. Het is een verhaal over de Ierse onafhankelijkheidswording. Maar wie de geschiedenis een beetje kent, weet dat niet alleen Ierse jongens met een leugen aan het front kwamen. Het is ook het verhaal hoe de oorlog trekt.

Condon was wel erg jong. De jongste naar verluid. De leugen kon hem wel in de oorlog krijgen, maar wanneer werd dat eindelijk doorzien? Geen leugen kon hem meer uit de oorlog krijgen en getuige zijn grafzerk (of hij er nu in ligt of niet) toen hij eenmaal dood was, wist men wel heel precies dat hij nog maar veertien was. Zo was deze oorlog, makkelijk begonnen, maar schier onmogelijk om uit te komen.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
Koning George V,
Colmar von der Goltz,
Sir Ian Hamilton,
H.H. Asquith,
Anton Kröller.