T.S. Eliot

In the opening pages of Rodney Needham's Belief, Language, and Experience (1972), was the following epigraph:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years -
Twenty years largely wasted, ... -
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating. ...

                                                                                                                -T. S. Eliot
                                                                                                                  from 'East Coker'

Defoe quote

Currently, sporadically, reading Camus' The Plague. When I first opened it up, a sentence stilled me: 

"It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not" 

-Daniel Defoe

Calvin and Hobbes on creation

Craig Martin interviews Talal Asad

Talal Asad: As far as I can tell, most people have understood that I was trying to think about religion as practice, language, and sensibility set in social relationships rather than as systems of meaning. In that book and much of my subsequent work I have tried to think through small pieces of Christian and Islamic history to enlarge my own understanding of what and how people live when they use the vocabulary of “religion.” I certainly did not want to claim that as a historical construct “religion” was a reference to an absence, a mere ideology expressing dominant power. It was precisely because I was dissatisfied with the classical Marxist notion of ideology that I turned my attention to religion. I was gradually coming to understand that the question I needed to think about was how learning a particular language game was articulated with a particular form of life, as Wittgenstein would say. The business of defining religion is part of that larger question of the infinite ways language enters life. I wanted to get away from arguments that draw on or offer essential definitions: “Religion is a response to a human need,” “Religion may be a comfort to people in distress but it asserts things that aren’t true,” “Religion is essentially about the sacred,” “Religion gives meaning to life,” “Religion and science are compatible/incompatible,” “Religion is responsible for great evil,” “So is science —and religion is also a source of much good,” “No, science is not a source of evil, as religion often is; it is technology and politics that are the problem—the social use to which science is put.”

I argued that to define “religion” is to circumscribe certain things (times, spaces, powers, knowledges, beliefs, behaviors, texts, songs, images) as essential to “religion,” and other things as accidental. This identifying work of what belongs to a definition isn’t done as a consequence of the same experience—the things themselves are diverse, and the way people react to them or use them is very different. Put it this way: when they are identified by the concept “religion,” it is because they are seen to be significantly similar; what makes them similar is not a singular experience common to all the things the concept brings together (sacrality, divinity, spirituality, transcendence, etc.); what makes them similar is the definition itself that persuades us, through what Wittgenstein called a “captivating picture,” that there is an essence underlying them all—in all instances of “religion.”
The things regarded as hanging together according to one conception of religion come together very differently in another. That’s why the translation of one “religious” concept into another is always problematic. But Genealogies doesn’t argue that the definition of religion is merely a matter of linguistic representation. Religious language—like all language—is interwoven with life itself. To define “religion” is therefore in a sense to try and grasp an ungraspable totality. And yet I nowhere say that these definitions are abstract propositions. I stress that definitions of religion are embedded in dialogs, activities, relationships, and institutions that are lovingly or casually maintained—or betrayed or simply abandoned. They are passionately fought over and pronounced upon by the authoritative law of the state.

Definitions of religion are not single, completed definitive acts; they extend over time and work themselves through practices. They are modified and elaborated with continuous use. To the extent that defining religion is a religious act, whether carried out by “believers” or “nonbelievers,” it may also be an attempt at attacking or reinforcing an existing religious tradition, at reforming it or initiating a new one.

My problem with “universal definitions of religion,” therefore, has been that by insisting on a universal essence they divert us from asking questions about what the definition includes and what it excludes, how, by whom, for what purpose; about what social/linguistic context it makes good sense to propound a given definition and when it doesn’t.

more here

*Of course, it's "socially constructed"

Of course, 'culture' and 'religion' are socially constructed. A lot of "things" and "stuff" are socially motivated man-made constructs. But this does not divorce them from their roots or particular histories. Calling something out as "socially constructed" doesn't do much anymore and it certainly doesn't negate its history. At some point, the re-appropriation and bastardization of non-white culture has been driven by a fascination of "otherness", a romanticization (or demonization) of a "mystique", and arguably driven by a western marketing phenomenon for 'originality', being 'unique', and bricolage 'spirituality'. The contemporary political economy drives capitalization to sever 'culture' from its historical roots for the sake of "fashion", "trend", and "art". This is not to say that it cannot or should not be appreciated, quite the contrary, it should be appreciated, understood, and respected, accompanied by the significance of its local value and sense of history.

*appropriately, this discussion changes in various ways depending on what it is we're talking about and its context. 

Calvin and Hobbes - Opiate of the Masses

*Experiencing 'time'...

These days, time only seems to exist when I have an outside engagement. Right before (some phenomenologically arbitrary measure of 'before') the time of meeting - whether it be for a seminar, lecture, meeting with a professor, friend or colleague - 'time' comes into existence reminding me that there is a conventional clock by which we hold our promises. In this sense, it would seem that 'time' is inexplicably tied up with 'integrity'; being some place at some time to meet some one after making the agreement to meet.

This is the only instance when 'time,' at least nowadays, seems to exist. Of course, I am completely being self-absorbed and utterly dismissive of the movements of the sun and the moon. But socially speaking the abstraction of 'time,' constructing a standardized measure of movement for the purposes of cooperation and coordination, among other things, serves to control and test the 'integrity' by which we proceed in our trajectories.

All that exists, in this period of my life, is my dissertation and my computer (through which I am connected to family, friends, and social happenings - which could warrant the argument that a computer, and its functions, with the conjunction that the internet gives access to the world, is the social. In a Durkheimian way, the computer could be argued to be 'God'). 

Otherwise I'm like:

And on most days...

Wednesday?

Individual and Society

Although sociology is defined as the science of society, in reality it cannot deal with human groups, which are the immediate concern of its research, without in the end tackling the individual, the ultimate element of which these groups are composed. For society cannot constitute itself unless it penetrates individual consciousnesses [sic] and fashions them ‘in its image and likeness.’  

Emile Durkheim

… in one sense it is very true that every psychological phenomenon is a sociological phenomenon, the mental element being identified with the social one. But, in another sense, everything is reversed. The proof as to what is social can only be a mental one; in other words, we can never be sure we have fathomed the meaning and function of an institution if we are not capable of reliving its impact upon the individual consciousness. As such an impact is an integral part of institutions, any interpretation must aim to match the objectivity of the historical or comparative analysis with the subjectivity of the experience as it has been lived. 

Claude Levi-Strauss

Malcolm X on Violence

Victims of Violence are Accused of Violence... by ellvispresley

Calvin and Hobbes on Resolutions and Virtue