New Reviews

Denise Howell gives Small Pieces an excellent write-up in her law-centered blog, Bag and Baggage. Thanks, Denise!

It’s going to take a bit longer to thank Alex Golub for his review since it’s not a review so much as a critical piece. In the best sense. In fact, it is a superb response to the ideas in the book. He kicks at the spots in my “argument” that most need kicking and, most important, he laughs at my jokes.

Alex is an anthropology grad student at the Univ. of Chicago who maintains an excellent site about Hans Georg Gadamer. And although he engages with my book as if it were a moderately serious intellectual effort, he writes passionately, personally and with a ragged edge I enjoy:

The book starts small and you don’t get the theory ’til the end: He spends most of the book shaking the big can of whup-ass he holds in his hand and giving you an I-dare-you, ‘don’t make me open this big can of whup-ass’ look. And when he finally does open it in the last two chapters, you realize Why You’ve Been Fearing The Whup-Ass All Along.

He takes me to task most systematically on the question of knowledge. Alex thinks I approach this too much from the philosopher’s viewpoint according to which knowledge is the defining human experience: “I think he places too much emphasis on ‘truth’ and not enough on ‘body’. We do not just laugh – we cum.” (I told my publisher I didn’t have enough “fuck”s in the book!) Furthermore, he says I get stuck on “knowing” rather than seeing that underneath the change in knowledge is a more important change in the nature of convincing, i.e., rhetoric. To this I reply with an emphatic and enflamed: Yeah, that’s right! So, take that! That chapter was trying to do something fairly specific: kick the pins out from the traditional view of knowledge that leads us to absurd, anti-human, anti-body ideas about what it means to be a human. On the other side of the Dam of Knowledge there’s all of life, including jokes, porn, mysticism, mindless entertainment and RageBoy. I didn’t mean to imply that on the other side of the Dam is only a different type of knowledge. At least, I don’t remember meaning to imply that. In truth, I believe Alex has smoked out a genuine prejudice and consequent blinkering in the chapter.

Alex uses this to help make his larger case: “I guess what I’m saying is that philosophy can only advocate for lived experience for so long before it’s out of its league.” What else does Alex the anthropology graduate student think is needed? Hmm. Wait for it … Anthropology!

David has taken us 90% of the way, but to get over the finish line he needs [not] only anthropologists to help him along, he needs artists and artisans – the people who weld, sing, dance, fuck – as well.

To which I reply, vehemently, that little vein in my forehead throbbing: Absolutely correct! I didn’t intend this to be the last book written about the Web. We need poetry, science, religion, and every other way we humans have devised to understand ourselves and our world.

So, let me be clear: I love Alex’s review. What a gift.

(Here’s an amusing picture of Alex.)

Categories: Uncategorized dw