Books 2011: go drifting away

[hawkwing_lb]

Books 2011: 167-168


167. Terry Pratchett, Snuff.

Not Sir Terry's most glorious hour. But a bad Pratchett is still a decent book. Look for a fuller review out of Ideomancer in their Winter issue.


nonfiction

168. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism. Routledge Classics, Oxford, 2002; first English edition 1957.

Popper is here having a philosophical slapfight about the nature and purposes of history. Theoretical slapfights, even outdated ones, always have the possibility to be interesting, and once you get past Popper's decision to create a new vocabulary (and an occasionally counter-intuitive one), and his blasts at what are (now, at least) men of straw, he makes a few good points, and has some ideas that any historian perhaps ought to examine.

Comments

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I remember Karl Popper being mentioned in an Honours Course I once did - it was a great course, on the Archaeology of Religion, Magic & Burial.

I never did get around to reading any of his stuff...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I did not find him... hmm. Well, let us say that he might be a great mind? But I will not be seeking out his other, longer, works on purpose. :P

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I went through a phase as a postgrad when I avidly read up on Foucault, Wittgenstein, Barthes, etcetera. I liked those three, but just couldn't cope with Heideger (can't even spell it...). And when someone mentions 'fourfold hermeneutics' and 'transcendental phenomology', I just want to curl into a ball and hide...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Then I shouldn't mention about Bourdieu and Mauss and phenomenological approaches to landscape and experience...?

(My thesis, it needs the theory. The lovely, terrible theory.)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Ah, Bourdieu. I do like Bourdieu. And Giddens, too...

I was wondering when post-processualism was going to impact upon Classical archaeology - there seems to have been precious little impact on the stuff I've dabbled with so far. It all seems to have ground to a halt with Renfrew. All this environmental determinism stuff - it's about time the cobwebs got blown away

Go theory!

And yes, I can't even spell 'phenomenology'...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

If I say "ick, Renfrew," people will kick me. (I'm sure he's wonderful. He just writes like a freight train rolling.)

Yeah, experiential and sensory and performative approaches to the archaeology have only really got going in the last twenty or so years?

Yannis Hamilakis is one of the big movers, although a)he's most often doing prehistory things and b)he can take his theory acres away from the evidence. But my supervisor also does experiential things.

Do not speak to me of post-processualism, I beg you! Let it be interpretative archaeology, and not a word that turns my brain to mush and sleepiness...

(It's the S's. Possssst-procsssesssssualissssm sounds sso sssssinisssster.)

(And I'm at the punch-drunk stage of tired. Forgive.)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

:-)

I think it's probably post-post-post-post-processualism by now - I've been out of the whole TAG thing for a long, long time...

I'm sure my supervisor used to talk about interpretative archaeology - I had John Barrett, while he was in Glasgow. Don't know if you know him - very big in the UK Bronze Age...

I have no love for Renfrew. I had to listen to him wittering on about landscape art for two hours at a TAG conference once - he was supposed to be talking for twenty minutes, and he just went on, and on, and on. We even had to miss dinner...

Oh, shudder...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'm not much of a Bronze Age-ist, but I'm reasonably sure I've heard his name. (The up and downside to archaeology, and classics in particular: we're all six degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Usually not more than three...)

Then I will happily say, "Ick, Renfrew." Although not in public. :P

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Your secret is safe with me!

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Whew!