16485 results in Anthem Press
Index
- Nicholas Rescher, Patrick Grim
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- Theory of Categories
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- 29 February 2024
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- 05 September 2023, pp 161-165
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IX - Of the Bijuga Islands, and Inhabitants.
- Edited by Carol Bolton, Loughborough University, Christopher Brown
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- Captain Philip Beaver's African Journal
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Summary
IT has been observed in the preceding chapter that to the southward of the Continental Islands, forming the coastline between Cape Roxo and Bissao, there was a cluster of other islands, making an immense harbour to the island of Bulama.
This groupe of islands is called in our charts the Bissagos islands, and are placed on shoals, called the shoals of the Rio Grande; these are the Bijuga Islands.
S.S.W. of Cape Roxo, at the distance of about twelve leagues, and in the latitude of 11. 40. north, is the N. W. edge of what are called, by seamen, the shoals of the Rio Grande. These shoals, or sand banks, extend thence in a S. E. direction full forty leagues, and are interspersed with many marshy and half-drowned, and many inhabited, islands. The north and the eastern edges of this bank are terminated by them, but the south and the western limits of it are not exactly known; at least we are so ignorant of them, that, to my knowledge, several ships have lately struck upon them, out of sight of land; and more vessels have been lost upon these shoals, I verily believe, than on all the rest of Africa. We can scarcely be said to be better acquainted with them than with the Yellow Sea.
The northern edge of these islands and shoals forms the southern limit of the great channel leading to the island of Bulama, and the mouth of the Rio Grande: although there are some shoals in this channel, yet it is every where abundantly wide, with a sufficient depth of water for the largest vessels; and in every part of it ships may anchor in perfect safety at any season of the year.
The eastern edge is formed by the islands of Galenas, Porcos, Canabac, Mayo, Honey and Poison; along which there is a deep, though narrow, and somewhat dangerous and intricate channel. The isle of Jamber, (though belonging to the Bijugas,) and the shoals between it and the Naloo shore, I consider as forming the eastern boundary of this passage.
Of the south and west limits I have not any knowledge.
Of the islands which lie scattered over this immense bank, scarcely more than the names of some of the principal ones is known to Europeans.
3 - Empirical Issues in Categorization
- Nicholas Rescher, Patrick Grim
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- Theory of Categories
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- 29 February 2024
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- 05 September 2023, pp 59-72
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Summary
Preliminaries
Categories, categorization, and the organization of information are crucial topics throughout the broad realm of cognitive studies, not merely in philosophy but in both theoretical and empirical work in linguistics, psychology, and the brain sciences. Each of these disciplines offers intriguing findings regarding the ways we categorize—findings of importance for the understanding of human knowledge.
The central philosophical point that categories are crucial for cognition, in general, is fully recognized in the empirical work of other disciplines. As the linguist George Lakoff emphasizes,
Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things—chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at all—we are employing categories.[…] Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives. (Lakoff 1987, 5–6)
A point that is clear philosophically, and essentially a priori, is that categorization and discrimination are linked. To recognize things as belonging to different categories is to be able to discriminate, at least conceptually, between items in those different categories. The “at least conceptually” allows us to say that we can discriminate between prime numbers greater than a googol and non-primes greater than a googol, though actually being able to name any of the former may be beyond our abilities. With that proviso, indeed, to recognize things as belonging to different categories is to discriminate between them.
This in no way forces us to say that all discrimination entails categorization: that if we recognize that this thing is different than that, it must be because we have assigned the two things to different categories. Categories are kinds, with the kinship of kinds determined by the pragmatic context of our purposes. Two things x and y will always belong to different sets or different arbitrary collections: we need to merely think of (1) the set to which the coins in my pocket and x belong as members and (2) the set to which the coins in my pocket and y belong as members.
Lieutenant Beaver's Journal on the island of Bulama
- Edited by Carol Bolton, Loughborough University, Christopher Brown
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- 05 September 2023, pp 53-174
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Summary
La condition de ceux qui gouvernent, n’est pas autre que celle de ce Cacique a qui l’on demandait s’il avait des esclaves, et qui répondit: Des eclaves, je n’en connais qu’un dans ma contrée, et cet esclave là, c’est moi.
Raynal Hist. Phil. et Pol. Prefixed to BARERE's “Pensée du Gouvernement, &c.”PREFACE
TO
LIEUTENANT BEAVER'S JOURNAL.
I HAD long doubted whether or not I should publish the Journal I had kept during my residence on the island of Bulama, or whether it would not have been better to make short extracts from it only; but, though the form of a Journal is tedious, and the matter, in that shape, generally uninteresting, yet on this occasion it was thought best to preserve it, because it was written at the time, and with the feelings which our situation then called forth. It were easy to have put it into a different form and language, but then it would not have been what it professes to be, a transcript of my Journal actually written on the island.
There are parts, very many perhaps, which require an apology, and which it may be said, should not have been published: for instance, my first day's Journal of the 19th of July, and the one following, and those of the 12th and 17th of August, with many others; but, as before observed, it was thought best to publish the Journal as it was written; because it is conceived that if it had any interest at all, it arose from laying before the reader, our precise situation and sentiments at the time; making him as it were, one of the colonists, without experiencing any of their difficulties.
As this Journal, therefore, was written without the most distant idea of publishing it, and with the greatest probability of never being carried off the island; as it was written amidst some danger, and great bodily, as well as mental exertions, it is confidently hoped that the liberal-minded will not too rigidly criticise it; about the opinions of others I am not very anxious.
Words have been sometimes, but not frequently, altered: the sense never.
Lieutenant Beaver's Journal, &c.
ABOUT one o’clock the Calypso sailed for Sierra Leone, with the major part of the colonists, and saluted us with three guns, which was returned with seven.
4 - Yulanpen Sūtra: Apocryphal or Authentic?
- Xiaohuan Zhao, University of Sydney
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- Chindian Myth of Mulian Rescuing His Mother
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- 02 March 2024
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- 05 September 2023, pp 37-74
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Summary
Although the Yulanpen Sūtra is widely considered to be the primary source for the Mulian myth, the origin of this sūtra has been the subject for much debate and discussion among scholars of Chinese religion since the midtwentieth century. There is no extant such scripture in Indic sources known to us, nor is there any mention in them of Maudgalyāyana's journeys to the Dark Regions to rescue his mother (BandoÌ 2005; Kapstein 2007). The dearth of direct textual evidence in Indic sources and the centuries-long confusion and controversy surrounding the translation, transmission and cataloguing of the Yulan Sūtra/Yulanpen Sūtra as examined in the previous chapter have cast doubt on the authenticity of this Buddhist scripture. Little wonder that the Yulanpen Sūtra is frequently regarded as a Chinese Buddhist apocryphal scripture as shown in Ikeda (1926: 59–64), Honda (1927), Fujino (1956: 340–345), Iwamoto (1968; 1979: 10–20), Miyakawa (1973: 225), Makita (1976: 47–50, 84), Chen (1983: 1–2), Mair (1989: 17), Irisawa (1990: 152), Zhu (1987: 54–59; 1993: 3–11), Teiser (1986: 48–49; 1988: 46; 1989: 192), Liao (1995: 5–6), Hsiao (1995: 231–296; 1996: 83–98; 2005: 326–333), Yin (2006: 17–19), Yoshikawa (2003: 62), Tsuchiya (2005: 189–191) and Xiong (2014; 2015: 247–289), to name but a few. Most representative of them are perhaps Iwamoto, Zhu and Hsiao.
Major Arguments against the Authenticity of the Text
Iwamoto was one of the first major Japanese scholars to challenge the authenticity of the Yulanpen Sūtra. He (1968, quoted in Zhu 1993: 8; 1979: 9ff.) claims that the sūtra is not a translation from India, let alone a translation by Dharmarakṣa , mainly on the grounds that:
(1) The content of the Mulian story is not found elsewhere in sources from ancient India;
(2) The ‘divine eye’ (Skr. divyacakṣ́us; Ch. tianyan) is a common expression in Indian Buddhist texts, whereas the ‘eye of the Way’ (daoyan) that occurs in the Yulanpen Sūtra is a typical Chinese indigenous expression;
(3) The conception of ‘filial devotion and submission’ (xiaoshun) is peculiar to Chinese lineage culture, as is the conception of ‘six kinds of relatives’ (liuqin) that finds no equivalent in Indian Buddhist texts, where the odd number ‘five’ or ‘seven’ tends to be used to refer to types of relatives;
3 - Yulanpen Sūtra in Chinese Buddhist Catalogues
- Xiaohuan Zhao, University of Sydney
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- Chindian Myth of Mulian Rescuing His Mother
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Summary
Tales about saving ghosts from suffering in Hell and about gaining rebirth in a better realm for oneself or for one's deceased ancestors by making merit through charitable acts are numerous in Buddhist scriptures, but none of them features Maudgalyāyana as the central character except the Yulanpen Sūtra.
Dharmarakṣ́a and Indian Buddhist Text Transmission and Translation in China
Traditionally, the Indo-Scythian Dharmarakṣ́a (aka Zhu Fahu, d. 308) is credited with the translation of the sūtra, although there is no such Buddhist scripture extant in any known Indic sources. Respectfully dubbed ‘Bodhisattva Śramanna’ (Pusa shamen) and ‘Dunhuang Bodhisattva’ (Dunhuang pusa), Dharmarakṣ́a was born and spent his childhood in Dunhuang, a major stop on the ancient Silk Road in northwestern China; he renounced the world and became a monk (chujia) at the age of eight and studied under Śrı̄mi (Shilimi), a Kuchean śramana alternatively known as Gaozuo; during the reign period of Emperor Wu of Jin ( Jin Wudi, r. 266–290), Dharmarakṣ́a travelled extensively with his Kuchean teacher across the Western Regions, studying local languages while searching for scriptures, and returned with a great number of Kharośṭhı texts (huben); and he lived most of his productive life in Luoyang and Chang’an (modern Xi’an), translating scriptures with the assistance of a team of Central Asian and Chinese bilingual Śramanas and upāsakas, as noted by Monk Sengyou (445–518) in the ‘Biography of Zhu Fahu’ and elsewhere in the Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the Tripițaka (Chu sanzang jiji, T55n2145_013.0097c20; hereafter cited as Sanzang jiji; see also Mei 1996 and particularly Boucher 2006).
Dharmarakṣ́a was the most prolific Buddhist translator of the Western Jin (266–316). A total of 154 titles in 309 scrolls ( juan) are listed in the Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the Tripițaka (Sanzang jiji, T55n2145_002.0007b08– 0009b28) with Dharmarakṣ́a named as their translator. Of the 154 titles, sixty-four in a total of 116 scrolls are lost and known only by title to the compiler. Included now in the TaishoÌ Tripitaț ka with Dharmarakṣa given as their translator are ninety-four titles, seventy-six of which are found listed in the Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the Tripițaka. As for the remaining eighteen titles, they are all credited to Dharmarakṣ́a as the translator in the TaishoÌ Tripitaț ka probably under the influence of Chinese catalogues of Buddhist literature.
Contents
- Edited by Carol Bolton, Loughborough University, Christopher Brown
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24 - Pepe, Kek and Friends
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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- 28 February 2024
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- 15 August 2023, pp 239-248
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Summary
This chapter considers the adoption of cartoon mascots by US right-wing groups. This seems to be a phenomenon limited to the US context (McSwiney et al., 2021), although there has been some diffusion of this imagery beyond the United States. For example, Pepe the Frog is a character from the comic Boy's Club (2005) by Matt Furie (who has decried the appropriation of his character and even proclaimed him dead, as we will see). While originally there was no connection with right-wing ideas, in 2015, a number of memes associating the alt-right and Pepe were published on 4chan and in October, Donald Trump posted a cartoon of himself as Pepe. Kek is the deity of another satirical religion (The Cult of Kek) associated with the right. Pepe is considered an avatar of Kek.
Originally, right-wing propaganda took the form of “dog whistles” (Bhat & Klein, 2020) that is, references known to the initiated but that maintain a degree of deniability or simply appear nonsensical to the uninitiated. For example, the number 1488 is a white suprematist dog whistle: it consists of the number 14, which stands for “14 words” which is itself a short hand for the slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The number 88 stands for Heil Hitler, since H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. Thus white suprematist merchandise is often priced at $14.88. (https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/1488)
With the mainstreaming of Nazi imagery, the motivation for dog whistles seems to have diminished or possibly the amount of openly pro-Nazi, anti-semitic, pro-klan, etc., has increased along with dog whistles.
More recently, the alt-right has switched to using memes to recruit and spread their propaganda. According to Trillò and Shifman (2021, p. 2485), “Memes perform a number of key functions for the far-right, including channeling a dispersed user-base towards far-right movements and fostering in-group belonging among constituents.” They also point out that “the far-right's ability to accrue such a following depends on their ability to tap into the audience of commercial social media platforms.” (Trillò and Shifman, 2021, p. 2485)
Not only is alt-right propaganda and recruitment active on all social media, but the alt .rig ht has found alternative spaces in which to express its ideology and recruit.
1 - Humor and the Internet
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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Summary
The Internet (Web 1.0)
This is not a historical study, but it is important to start by noting that our world has changed significantly in an astonishingly short time span. Thirty years ago, this book would have been inconceivable simply because none of its subject matter existed. It is easy to forget that the changes we will consider all happened in under 30 years, and often much less.
The Internet was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) in Geneva, Switzerland. What Berners-Lee came up with was a transfer protocol (set of instructions) called HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) which was itself based on the older FTP (File Transfer Protocol) dating back to 1971. Berners-Lee also wrote the first browser, called WWW (World Wide Web [1990]) which allowed people to interact easily with files. Part of the development of HTTP and WWW involved laying the foundations of HTML, the code that tells browsers what to display on screen. WWW was followed by Mosaic (1993), Netscape (1994) and Internet Explorer (1995). Later, Netscape launched Mozilla (1998) as open source.
While originally meant as a decentralized network for military operations and after its adoption by academe as a way to transfer files and information about research, almost immediately the internet started being used as a way to socialize, much along the line of the first 1980s Bulletin board systems (BBSs: Fidonet, The WELL, etc.). BBSs were essentially a precursor of the internet, with the difference that they worked over phone lines and had a dial-up model (where a user would connect to the BBS, get their email or download news and log off to read them offline). Importantly the idea was to use a local BBS so that one would not have to make a long distance call, which at the time were much more expensive than local calls.
Usenet: The Big Eight and the alt. Hierarchy
BBSs “evolved” into usenet, which was decentralized; in other words, there was no need to call a central BBS. News, posts and discussions could be accessed from any computer on the network. Usenet was organized in a hierarchy of newsgroups (discussion boards) where users could post. For example the rec groups (rec stands for recreation) include rec.music, rec.film and others.
9 - The Spoiler Alert
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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Summary
According to Zimmer (2014) and McCool (2015) the term “spoiler” started out in the 1970s. McCool reports that in 1971 Doug Kenney, one of the founders of the National Lampoon, had a feature called “Spoilers” in which he revealed the ending of such films as The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Psycho. McCool also reports the use of “spoiler warning” in a column in the sci-fi magazine Destinies. As for the actual term “spoiler alert,” both sources agree that it first occurred in 1982, in a Usenet post (on Usenet, see Chapter 1), apparently in the context of a discussion of The Wrath of Kahn (a Star Trek movie).
A “spoiler alert” is essentially a courtesy warning to the reader/viewer/hearer that one is about to reveal something about a show, book, game, etc., that is a significant plot point (for example, who wins the game). Thus if one wants to avoid having the plot spoiled, one should stop reading/watching, etc. The interest in spoiler alerts comes from the fact this is very much a contemporary phenomenon and that jokes and memes have been using the term. If one searches for “spoiler alert” on the internet, one will find that numerous articles have the phrase “spoiler alert” in the title as a clever way of conveying the point of the article. For example, the title of Viega and Thompson (2012) is “Ten Years On, How Are We Doing? (Spoiler Alert: We Have No Clue)”. I will provide an extended example by analyzing a short 2015 comedy video by Key and Peele titled “Spoiler alert” which makes fun of the topic.
As we can see from the Google n-gram, in Figure 9.1, the earliest mention of the term begins in the 1990s, but the term does not really “take off” until the 2000s. So we can safely say that the spoiler alert is a practice (I hesitate to call it a genre) that is truly exclusive to the digital world. Now it is obvious that “spoilers” have always existed, at least potentially. It is easy to image someone saying, “Dante makes it out of hell and into heaven” to a reader in AD 1321 or a reader saying, “Aeneas makes it to Rome” to a would-be reader of the Aeneid in 18BC.
21 - Reaction Videos
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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- 15 August 2023, pp 207-216
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Summary
The reaction video is another genre unique to digital humor. According to Wikipedia, reaction videos go back to the 1970s in Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_video). The basic idea is that one shows a video of someone reacting to something, usually another video. There is a general consensus that one of the first set of viral reaction videos were the reactions to the infamous “2 girls 1 cup” pornographic video (which features coprofagia—the eating of excrement—and worse; Bliss, 2022). This is in line with the old observation that whenever there is a technological advance in the field of communication, pornography is among the first uses. Bliss (2022) maintains that a lot of reaction videos still revolve around pornography. In this sort of reaction video, the amusement or pleasure we draw is from watching the disgust of the viewers or their amusement, embarrassment or other emotional reaction, alone. In particular, Warren-Crow (2016) focuses on screaming “like a girl.” Indeed, according to Anderson (2011), the point of this sort of reaction video is that it allows the experience of a vicarious thrill without having to actually experience watching coprofagia, for example.
There are other, different kinds of reaction videos. In the genre that concerns us here, the screen is divided into two parts, either side by side, or one above the other, or in some cases the reaction is an inset video. The significant fact is that there are two different videos, and there is a contrast (incongruity) between the two videos. For ease of reference we will refer to the video that is being reacted to as the “target video.”
This is different from another genre of reaction video, in which a video which is not necessarily shown to the viewers is played for an audience in the video and the reactions are the subject of the video. There is debate as to what the first reaction video was. Warren-Crow (2016) claims that the first reaction video was “Nintendo Sixty-FOOOOOOOOOOUR” a video of a young boy and his sister who get very excited unpacking their Christmas present (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU). The video dates back to 2006 and is an unboxing video.
References
- Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
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- Decolonial Mourning and the Caring Commons
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- 15 August 2023, pp 199-238
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Acknowledgments
- Taharka Adé, San Diego State University
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- W. E. B. Du Bois' Africa
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Bibliography
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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- 15 August 2023, pp 253-270
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Decolonial Mourning and the Caring Commons
- Migration-Coloniality Necropolitics and Conviviality Infrastructure
- Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez
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This book is the product of an endless individual and collective process of mourning. It departs from the author's mourning for her parents, their histories and struggles in Germany as Gastarbeiter, while it also engages with the political mourning of intersectional feminist movements against feminicide in Central and South America; the struggles against state and police misogynoir violence of #SayHerName in the United States; the resistance of refugees and migrantized people against the coloniality of migration in Germany; and the intense political grief work of families, relatives, and friends who lost their loved ones in racist attacks from the 1980s until today in Germany. Bearing witness to their stories and accounts, this book explores how mourning is shaped both by its historical context and the political labor of caring commons, while it also follows the building of a conviviality infrastructure of support against migration-coloniality necropolitics, dwelling toward transformative and reparative practices of common justice.
19 - “Hard to Watch”: Cringe and Embarrassment Humor
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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- 28 February 2024
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- 15 August 2023, pp 189-196
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Summary
Consider the following jokes. The first is by Sarah Silverman
(1) “I was raped by a doctor, (…) Which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.” (quoted in Goodyear, 2005)
The second involves Tig Notaro and Natasha Leggero. A little background is necessary: in 2013, Leggero hosted a self-produced show on YouTube called “Tubbing with Tash” in which she “interviewed” comedians in her hot tub. In the following video
https://youtu.be/8YNtDkgxNG0
(2) Tig Notaro is sitting, fully clothed in a brown suit, in the tub, while Leggero and the other people present are wearing swimsuits. Leggero wears a bikini. Around 1:23, Leggero says: “I wanted you to wear a bikini.” Notaro, pointing to her suit, says: “Close enough” and takes off the suit jacket. Leggero continues: “We’re trying to get a lot of hits on this.”
This may seem like an innocuous, if somewhat odd, exchange (why would Notaro wear a suit in a hot tub?). However, the video was posted October 30, 2013. Notaro had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and had had a double mastectomy without reconstructive surgery.
I think that it is unnecessary to explain why considering rape “bittersweet” and asking a cancer survivor who has undergone a double mastectomy to wear a bikini in order to get more hits on YouTube is cringeworthy. These two examples have the advantage of being very short, but we will also examine part of an episode of the American version of the sitcom The Office, below. First however, we need to define “cringe humor” also known as “embarrassment humor.”
We live in the “age of cringe” (Schwanebeck, 2021). Schwanebeck puts the beginning of the age of cringe as the early 2000s. Of course, awkwardness has existed since Adam and Eve had to cover themselves up—that's not the point. The point is that awkwardness, embarrassment and cringe are one of the defining themes of humor from the 2000s onward.
Cringe humor is defined as humor in which the hearer experiences vicarious embarrassment on behalf of one or some of the participants in the humor (Hye-Knudson, 2018; Schwanebeck, 2021).
W. E. B. Du Bois' Africa
- Scrambling for a New Africa
- Taharka Adé
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- 28 February 2024
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W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the leading figures of Pan-African thought and activism in the twentieth century. As a sociologist, Du Bois wrote much about the historical and social circumstances of African Americans while often acknowledging the African historical background of much of African American, or Negro, culture. In 1946 Du Bois published The World and Africa, which was a culmination of previous attempts at penning a narrative of African history beginning with his 1915 publication The Negro, in which he included the social-historical experience of African Americans within the continuity of African history. This book delivers for the first time a comprehensive Afrocentric investigation and critique of Du Bois's writings on African history. It argues that while Du Bois presented at the time a strong critique of the Eurocentric construction of African history, many of Du Bois's descriptions and arguments about African people and history were likewise flawed with interpretations that projected the cultural subjectivities of Europe. Further, while Du Bois rightfully presents the historical relationship between African Americans and Africa as a justification for Pan-African activism, this book contends that Du Bois's failure to center African culture instead of race leads to superficial justifications for Pan-African unity.
22 - The Use of Humor by the Alt-Right
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Humor 2.0
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- 15 August 2023, pp 219-224
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Summary
In this chapter, we will consider how the alt-right (see Chapter 1) uses humor to recruit new followers by presenting their propaganda under the guise of humor/satire/irony and tries to take advantage of the retractability of humor (“I was just kidding”).
Is the Right Even Funny?
The title of this section may seem peculiar, after all, why wouldn't the right be funny? Admittedly, the Nazis were not particularly known for their sense of humor, but surely we would expect less extreme forms of right wing groups to have humor. However, there is a general sense in the academic community of humor researchers that right wingers are just unfunny. In fact, Young (2020) is a book dedicated to explaining why conservatives prefer outrage to irony and satire. The problem is that indeed a lot of right-wing humor will be absolutely unfunny to the average reader because of the problems we discussed in Chapter 3 that is, the unavailability of the scripts required to understand the joke.
However, Sienkiewicz and Marx (2022) provide evidence, based on viewership data, that not only is the right producing humor and satire, but that it is quite successful (for example, Gutfeld! had excellent ratings of over two million viewers, beating all other late night satirical news shows, in 2021).
The Alt-Right Propaganda Machine
Having established that the right does produce successful humor and satire, Sienkiewicz and Marx argue that the right is using them to recruit and radicalize supporters. The idea, well developed in Sienkiewicz and Marx (2022; see also Greene, 2019), is that mainstream shows such as Gutfeld! or publications such as Babylon Bee, or podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, through a complex network of promotions, recommendations and advertisement funnel an audience toward increasingly radical material that culminates in explicit white suprematism, Nazi propaganda and recruitment. For a more detailed discussion of Sienkiewicz and Marx (2022), see Attardo (2023).
This is not just speculation. Bowman-Grieve (2013) shows that “whites only” dating sites promote discussion, interaction and the formation of interpersonal bonds and relationships among white supremacists and therefore contribute to the recruitment and radicalization of the recruits in terrorist groups.
2 - Du Bois on African History and Classical Antecedents
- Taharka Adé, San Diego State University
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- Book:
- W. E. B. Du Bois' Africa
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 28 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 15 August 2023, pp 47-74
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- Chapter
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Summary
Du Bois and Africa
The fields of social science and humanities in the Western world developed with inherent biases about the hierarchical nature of civilizations, cultures, languages and customs. Du Bois, though he was trained by the West, appears to have some appreciation of this fact as he writes The World and Africa. However, there are a number of things that Africologists recognize today as Agency Reduction Formations that Du Bois did not have the theoretical foundation necessary to pinpoint as such. Nevertheless, his insight on the reduction of African agency was still profound. Recall, he once stated of an increasingly colonized Africa, “By the end of the nineteenth century the degradation of Africa was as complete as organized human means could make it.”
It is apparent that Du Bois understood that Europe, through power and force, had positioned itself as the superior culture between itself and Africa. Du Bois would state, “A system at first conscious and then unconscious of lying about history and distorting it to the disadvantage of the Negroids became so widespread that the history of Africa ceased to be taught,” and that “every effort was made in archaeology, history, and biography, in biology, psychology, and sociology, to prove the all but universal assumption that the color line had a scientific basis.” This “color line” would be famously voiced by Du Bois as the primary issue of the twentieth century. Many attribute the notion of the “color line” to arguments for social justice measures intended to bring about equal treatment and socioeconomic conditions among those of African and European descent.
However, Du Bois may have meant something a bit more than social justice. I argue that in this text, The World and Africa, Du Bois, despite his aforementioned ideological shortcomings, is actually advocating for cultural justice. Du Bois argues, and I agree, that the European world has distorted the facts of history in order to misattribute upon itself all notions of human technological advancement and intellectual heritage. As Du Bois put it, “Without the winking of an eye, printing, gunpowder, the smelting of iron, the beginnings of social organization, not to mention political life and democracy, were attributed exclusively to the white race and to Nordic Europe.”
This eurocentric masquerade has done its job at standardizing ways of knowing under a type of false universalism.
11 - Memetic Drift or the Alliteration Arsonist
- Salvatore Attardo
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- Book:
- Humor 2.0
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 28 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 15 August 2023, pp 111-122
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- Chapter
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Summary
In this chapter, we will describe the “Cheryl's she shed” meme cycle. The term “meme cycle” is a deliberate calque on “joke cycle” the term used by folklorists to describe groups of jokes, usually thematically related. The theoretical purpose is to engage the concept of memetic drift, which we introduced in Chapter 2, in more detail and to go beyond it by introducing the idea of semantic bleaching and considering memes as syntactic constructions as the end result of memetic drift.
Joke Cycles
Consider this example:
How many Polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five—one to hold the bulb and four to turn the ceiling (chair). (Dundes, 1987, p. 143)
This was the “original” light bulb joke, variants of which swept the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Light bulb jokes were centered around the “changing a light bulb” situation, which, as everyone knows, is normally performed by one person climbing on a ladder or chair and manually screwing in the light bulb in the socket. In the jokes, an unusually high number of people were required (e.g., six or seven), which is of course incongruous, and this incongruity was partially (very partially!) justified by the fact that they engaged in a very unorthodox way of doing so, which introduced another incongruity, for example by having one person stand on a table and the other six turning the table (or worse, the ceiling). The invited inference was of course that the group of people changing a light bulb in such an inefficient and counterintuitive way must be stupid, which was confirmed by the mention of the ethnicity of the group (Polish, in the original joke). The stereotype for stupidity was thus both confirmed and served as resolution (justification) of the incongruous behavior. I discuss light bulb jokes in some detail in Attardo (2001). For the shallow nature of such groupings, see Hempelmann (2003).
What made lightbulb jokes interesting to me, as a linguist, was not so much that these jokes targeted originally Polish-Americans, and the reasons behind this and other ethnic jokes, masterfully explored in Davies (1990).