Henry Giroux states, in “Obama and the Promise of Education“: As I’ve learned during the past eight years: democracy cannot be fruitful without an educated, engaged citizenry. Perhaps we can finally put the time of anti-intellectualism behind us.
Tag Archives | responsibility
Hector: Family Man, but Hero First
Book VI of Homer’s Iliad shows the contention in the heart of Hector, Ilium’s champion, but also a husband and new father: he is torn between his responsibilities as a hero to his people and as a the head of the household. Like so many soldiers going off to battle today, Hector is a new father who must risk his life to maintain his people’s way of life.
Poor, Confusing Elpenor
Near the end of his stay with Circe in Book X of the Odyssey, Odysseus and crew prepare to leave Aiaia and head for the Underworld. It wasn’t his idea: Circe told him to go to hell. Well, what does he expect? He hung out with her for a year, ate her food, shared her “flawless bed of love,” and one day — from the prompting of his men — decides to leave, and fairly urgently judging by what happens to Elpenor.
Revisionary Mythmaking
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the [...]
Eliot’s Tradition
T. S. Eliot’s aesthetic in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” borders on a sort of mysticism. Ostensibly concerned with the foundation and history of poetry, Eliot only addresses the contemporaneous effects of poetry — both on the poet and the poet’s milieu. The poet, to Eliot, rewords, or (re)creates, not new art, but new form in an individual expression. The poet lives and expresses “the present moment of the past” concentrating on poetry’s living substance.
Essay on Critical Man
With this conclusion in his Essay on Man, Pope’s Essay on Criticism seemingly becomes irrelevant. I am interested here in how Whatever is, is right relates to criticism and writing. Rather than negating criticism altogether, Whatever is, is right only supports the critic’s endeavor further.