I’ve been away from the OAC for a while, but those of you who may have read my blog posts or have communicated with me in the past may well know that last year my thinking was rather infected by Deleuze and Guattari. Well, now there’s a new infection from which I’m suffering: Baudrillard, in particular his work on ‘The Political Economy of the Sign.’ This work has thrown up a few questions, or problems, for me and I was hoping to open up a couple of points to wider discussion in order to…

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'The Archetype of the Undergraduate'

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The society of the spectacle lives on, growing stronger and stronger with each passing hour as marketing methods engender the gross explosion of mass commodification – Mao Tse Tung T-shirts, Deep fried…

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            In the contemporary climate, where the nation-state model so deeply permeates political and economic discourse, the notions of nationalism and national identity are granted ever more important status within social theory. Supranational organisations such as the IMF, European Union and World Bank represent a new level of abstraction for social scientists to examine. Members of societies or cultures no longer only identify,… Continue

A preliminary reading of some of the themes of Deleuze and Guattari, so I would appreciate any criticism or comment:

 

Of all those who sought to counteract the structuralist invasion envisioned by Derrida (2009) arguably the most creative, provocative and influential were Deleuze and Guattari. Their works permeate a vast range of discursive formations in a highly Deleuzian intersectory, affective and…

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From a short extended essay written by a radical left-wing social thinker one of the great dilemmas of anthropological thought was born. The array of secondary literature which was spawned from Essai sur le don (1925) offers a huge variety of interpretation regarding the nature of the problematic notion of the gift. These attempts to further develop the questions posed, and partially answered, by Marcel Mauss in origin and elucidation become caught in an apparent act of bad-faith,… Continue

This started as a comment on Heesun Hwang’s brilliant blog post ‘What is postmodernism?’ but quickly became far too long, absurd and insubstantial, so I decided it would be better to add as a blog post:



I thought I might add another perspective to the question… Continue

Among the cryptic writings of Deleuze and Guattari there lay an array of oddities which take such a unique and singular form that their significance is by no means apparent. These oddities, along with the very nature of the theories, makes the task of understanding the works of…

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“I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or…

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In an article I read recently in the Leonardo journal Paul Lang draws some wonderful similarities between the process of scientific discovery and artistic creativity, focussing upon music as an…

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The ideas expressed and questions posed here are a follow up to an earlier piece entitled 'Is anthropology art?' and the discussion which ensued with John McCreery…

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The question of anthropology's correct place in the academic division of labour has split the discipline for a long time. The positivist view of the likes of Radcliffe-Brown being placed in distinction to the perception of the later Evans-Pritchard who saw it belonging to the humanities. So where are we now? Have we resolved this age old dispute? Alas, no. Many anthropologists and social scientists still harbour a secret desire…

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