What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

[Brian Peacock]

Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss. This time I'm going to get to the end, I really am.

[tattuchu]

Another Pratchett Discworld novel.

[Svartalf]

starting to reread Vance's Demon Princes saga.

[Brian Peacock]

Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss. This time I'm going to get to the end, I really am.

Page 70. And relax....

[JimC]

I swapped out Foucault for Firestone: The Dialectic of Sex. She presents a neat quote from Simone de Beauvoir in the first chapter:

The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is not only an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis - in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action.

Good stuff.

Fixed...

[Jason]

Well she did write it in 1949. Here's something from Firestone herself (also good stuff):

With the cultural portrayal of the smallest details of existence (e.g., deodorizing one's underarms), the distance between one's experience and one's perceptions of it becomes enlarged by a vast interpretive network; if our direct experience contradicts its interpretation by this ubiquitous cultural network, the experience must be denied. This process, of course, does not apply only to women. The pervasion of image has so deeply altered our very relationships to ourselves that even men have become objects - if never erotic objects. Images become extensions of oneself; it gets hard to distinguish the real person from his latest image, if indeed the Person Underneath hasn't evaporated altogether.

You might be tempted to think she's describing modern social media, but that was written in 1970.

[Sean Hayden]

The notion of a real self is problematic. But I would say that, wouldn't I?

edit - that was interesting :

[Jason]

It's an interesting book. The last fifth is kind of 'out there' going on about a possible 'cybernetic' communism of the future, but that aside it was a good read.

Now onto The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-Regulating Character Structure by Wilhelm Reich

[cronus]

Read a lot of Jack Vance in my sci-fi reading phase several decades gone now. Less serious than Asimov or Clarke. Still had a talent for ideas though. At present perusing a Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore. Amazing what people get upto in the remote regions of this land.

[cronus]

Read a lot of Jack Vance in my sci-fi reading phase several decades gone now. Less serious than Asimov or Clarke. Still had a talent for ideas though. At present perusing a Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore. Amazing what people get upto in the remote regions of this land.

[Jason]

The biological needs - food and sexual pleasure - create the necessity for the social community of men. The conditions of production thus created by community change the basic needs, without, however, destroying them, and also create new needs. The transformed and newly created needs in turn determine the further development of production and its means (tools and machines), and, along with them, the social and economic relations among men. Based on these conditions of production, certain ideas about life, morals, philosophy, etc., develop. They generally correspond to the level of technology at a particular time, i.e., to the ability to comprehend and master life. The social "ideology" thus created forms the human structure and is turned into a material force to be preserved in that structure as "tradition." Now, everything depends on whether the whole society or only a small minority participates in the formation of the social ideology. If a minority holds political power, then it also determines the type and content of the general ideology and the formation of human structure.

From the preface to the 1936 edition of The Sexual Revolution by Wilhelm Reich.

[Brian Peacock]

The 3rd edition? What is often referred to as The 3rd Reich.

[Jason]

It's the fourth edition sadly.

[Brian Peacock]

Shame, you coulda had a bit of fun with that: "I'm really enjoying my book at the moment. You know, the more I get into the 3rd Reich the more I like it..."

[Jason]

Interesting tidbit from it, saturated in Freudian Oedipal stuff, but still pretty good:

Thus, the family has a dual political function:

1. It reproduces itself by crippling people sexually. By maintaining the patriarchal family, it also preserves sexual repression and its results: sexual disturbances, neuroses, psychoses, sexual crimes.

2. It produces the authority-fearing, life-fearing vassal, and thus constantly creates new possibilities whereby a handful of men in power can rules the masses.

In this way, the family assumes, in the eyes of conservatives, its special importance as a bulwark of the social order they affirm. This is why it is one of the most strongly defended positions in conservative sexology. For it "maintains the state and the people"--in the reactionary sense. Therefore, evaluating the family may serve us as a yardstick for judging the general nature of social orders.