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Originally Posted by Glice

This is that deliberately polemical writing you were doing in that Philosophy thread again, isn't it? Because of course you realise that, besides America, very few places are still interested in Whorff/ anthropological readings. Or perhaps the history of Contemporary French philosophy has passed you by? Lacan, any one?

no, not just america, it's all the same paradigm in the humanities that our thoughts are determined by language, or the political structure or whatever the fuck is "out there" & goes "into" our brains (tabula rasa of various sorts) vs. innate faculties reminiscent of kant actually-- (foucault vs chomsky). yes we have innate ways of knowing and yes our behavior is largely determined by millions of years of evolution more than by the books you read. it's the humanities people giving themselves too much credit for what they could do for society. "oh if we just have a revolution my way people would be different!" BULLSHIT I SAY. there are too many innate tendencies to curb without the thought police. see i am cursed by having 2 BAs-- one in biology and another in literature (aka "english"). and then a masters in lit (where i had to read french wankers & their various disciples). but i was in science first and wanker disquisitions can never convince me when science finds good experiments and solid proof.

i could never bring myself to read lacan btw -- not without getting paid for it, hah hah-- fuck his unconscious. have you ever met a patient of a lacanian shrink btw? i met a woman once who went for 16 years & never heard a word back. what a joke! she finally quit (it strikes me that it took her so long). but medical incompetence aside, he's saying, fundamentally, that language governs behavior-- when you strip the bullshit, you end up with a similar paradigm as whorf. language governs nothing, or very little, and an enormous part of our behavior is innate. the newspeak of 1984 is impossible, as is creating a "new man" by teaching revolution. but cultural theory types lose themselves in superficial minutiae and ignore the forest for the trees. i regard sociobiology with much more respect than the verbal masturbations of french acidheads.

etc etc blah blah oompa loompa