A Significant Life by Todd May

Todd May writes what is ultimately an utterly impossible task in almost 200 pages, but does so in a worthwhile and readable way. He is searching for a potential objective idea of how to cultivate meaningfulness in life. In doing so, he is able to let the reader dictate what creates a meaningful life and how they decide what that truly is. Does he succeed in giving meaning? You will have to read on, but he does succeed in a succinct analyzing of meaning versus morals and the subjectivity that is fated in between. I would assume May is focusing mostly on a Western platform, for he is drafting a thought process that focuses on the literature and behaviors of people in that realm. Furthermore, he admits that in order to figure out these values and then meanings we must focus on the community at which we are tying them to. Therefore, we will focus on Western philosophy, communities, but also have to recognize their own subtle differences in which values change how we are as humans.

As far as style goes, I like May's writing style, he is thorough in explanations, and in giving examples. He also goes over responses he has gotten to such premises as well, he is a professor, and he gives his own life details. He goes piece by piece on how he is formulating his premise of a meaningful life focusing on narrative values of a life and yet within this premise writes without sounding dull or overly repetitive. He works in icons like Jimi Hendrix, Fannie Lou Hamer and positions their lives in which their narrative value is what creates the meaning, using ideas from Susan Wolf and her book Meaning in Life and Why It Matters. Narrative values as May says "Are not felt, they are lived." May would argue that even if you try to cultivate yourself as a specific person, that does not mean that you are indeed this person, his example his uncle who wanted to be subtle, who indeed was not. Even with this reference, I find it hard to believe that Jimi Hendrix had thought not about being extreme, and that others are actually successful in cultivating this. Surely it is a grey area in which one has to act, as they believe. This is where I find some issue in what May is contemplating, and yet overall I yearn to agree. 

It's not that I think May is entirely successful in coming up with what having meaning is in this world, but he touches upon hallmarks of living a life. Of course, just as May wants to find the objective ideal of meaning, his ideas are just as subjective as ever, especially in a philosophical world that generally dismisses the idea of absolute meaning. With that said, May's book is neither a self-help nor a preaching to the choir book, it is his own niche in which a discussion has been started and it is up to others to continue in finding. As he says, "To have a standard of meaningfulness is to possess a tool that allows us to reflect upon our lives in a fruitful way. That tool invites us to ask whether a feeling of emptiness is characteristic only of a moment or of something larger." While you might not agree with (all of his) notions of worth and meaning, it at least starts a great discussion as to what one finds meaningful in the context of the reader's life and what she or he will do to continue in the pursuit of meaningfulness. 

Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart Reader, writings from Paul Scheerbart and more

Scheerbart did it all, a true renaissance man as they say. He was an architect, theorist, author, scientist, and a peace seeker in a world that was headed for war, some of his famous stories include ideas which furthered the ideas of glass architecture and perpetual motion. Included in this piece is new artwork by editor Josiah McElheny and McElheny and Burgin do a wonderful job editing and collecting material for this book, they bring Scheerbart the madman and genius back on a platform. Inside the introduction comes my favorite line, "It is sometimes hard to know when he is joking, but one always feels the desire inside his dreams, however flabbergasting, to make sense of the world."

Included in this work is his architecture writing force Glass Architecture and his literary foray Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention. We also get an array of essays and critiques by scholars, novelists and filmmakers. Reading Scheerbart is constantly discovering and finding new modes of thinking, or at the very least, new models for writing our thoughts. He was a skilled writer, and supposedly a skilled madman and this comes through in his writings. 

Hopefully this book, and the publishing of translated works, another put out on University of Chicago and more put out by Wakefield Press and MIT Press will have Scheerbart taken in by many more people. Scheerbart was a magnanimous thinker and his way of thought sheds new light in different genres and theories. 

The Poetics of Ethnography in Martinican Narratives by Christina Kullberg
A work that focuses on the literary history of Martinique in using ethnographies to both discover, empower, and critique Martinique identity, even in complete recognition of the problems and of the limitations of ethnographic studies. In this way, it is interesting to see how writers from Martinique had used ethnography as a focal point, for progressing and representing the nations' literary culture. It is through ethnography that the authors do not necessarily attach themselves to a specific society, but are exploring the realms of identity and self, in relation to the cultures, geographical locations and communities at large.

Starting with Tropiques, the journal created by Rene Menil, Aime Cesaire and Suzanne Cesaire, Kullberg moves us through the culture, geography and politics of Glissant, Chamoiseau, Ina Cesaire, Strobel and Price. It shows how the Cesaires and Menil, were able to use ethnographic discourse to oppose colonial rule, and to provide stark contrasts to the world that they felt was being created around them. For Suzanne Cesaire, she explains how use African ethnography was a way to deeper explore themselves and references Leo Frobenius in her ideas of Africa. It is in this way that "Nature then took over, erasing the traces of the very violent cultural imprints made by colonialism. The Caribbean environment thereby suggests the existence of a harmonious Martinican self beneath layers of colonial oppression." It is the sense of poetics and writing that the authors of Tropiques are hoping will help revolutionize society against colonial force and a denial of what they see as a self outside of the white influence. The authors of the Tropiques used a mix of folk tales and oral history, with the ideas of Nietzsche, Mallarme, Rimbaud and countless other thinkers, in a way creating their own history of the other, and in a way integrating the other into themselves. 

It is with Glissant and Chamoiseau that the self-ethnographer and writing ethnographer becomes a prevalent idea, the notion of traveling within oneself, both as a colonial subject, and as one that lives within the motherland of your colony. Though whereas Glissant writes thirty years earlier as he looks at the internal Caribbean self, Chamoiseau looks towards the role that the writer and self should be taking in this world. What Glissant does, as Kullberg identifies, is places the poetic ethnography in a way to discover the self, in relation to the world around, and is this creating a connected geographic self, that focuses on both the location that is broken and still connected to the surroundings. The self and collective identity, is therefore a process that is continually changing, rather than a concrete structure. It is Glissant who puts forward a notion of ethnographic engagement, rather than an idea of objective knowledge put forth. There cannot be one easy culture to write and have as anything more than a representation, therefore engaging with the ideas, challenging the self is important to Glissant and Chamoiseau. In this way Chamoiseau and Ina Cesaire begin engaging with Creole past and storytelling, weaving it into their narratives in an effort to explore and engage. Obviously they are not without potential problems, but both use these narratives as a way to represent other voices, to break down the mold of the other. 

Kullberg then goes on to discuss texts by Strobel and Price, who are neither Martinican or fiction authors, but are ethnographers who have studied the French Caribbean, and in doing so are writing and engaging with and on Martinican literature, and ultimately examine this sense of the self versus surrounding. Through a theoretical and ethnographic point of view, they are able to reinforce, and also challenge notions of the ethnographic self put forward by Martinican authors of the past. Kullberg herself engages with the texts and authors to create and using ethnography as the focal point to study and capture the idea of the self in regards to the past and present community, in an ever-evolving way.

 

Being Apart by LaRose Parris

This book is important. That could be the end of this review, as this book is a phenomenal and deep look at the notion of existential thought held within Africana thought, well before it became a Western theory. What is so important about Being Apart is that it radically alters thought on Western Philosophy while not radically changing the importance of such theories.  In so doing, Parris, also shows how black thinkers and authors, Du Bois, C.L.R. James, etc were able to capitalize on the theories of Hegel, Marx, and more, even when those thinkers either had racist or exclusionary ideas. Even though the thinkers Parris writes about are original and write philosophical ideas that are groundbreaking, they are often pushed aside both in the academy and public consciousness in favor of white thinkers who had pursued similar or the same thought.

 

Being Apart begins by showing how white Western thinkers, politicians, philosophers set out to not only actively create a hierarchy of race, but try to erase the black life from thought altogether. In this way, society could be brought to justify racism, chattel slavery. Focusing on the works and words of David Walker and Frederick Douglass, Parris shows how they were two fold combating the racism that surrounded them (including slavery, which was still happening) and also justifying and proving existence, thought and the black life which was being tarnished. Parris discusses in depth the work of Thomas Jefferson, who though not an unknown fact, was an indisputable racist thinker, and his ideas had been transformed and transcended into the modern political landscape.

 

Parris then elaborates on the great minds of W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James who both thought and worked within a Marxist framework to discuss the problems of slavery, capitalism and the larger place in the world in which this was taking place. Though not explicit in his racism, Marx was rather ignorant in his discussion of the African continent and slavery in general, focusing on the white proletariat. Though a noted and important theorist, Gramsci's philosophies came after that of Du Bois. Parris then goes on to discuss Frantz Fanon and Kamau Brathwaite, and Brathwaite's Nation Language Theory which poses the voice as history and the voice as an important role in obtaining ownership and self-hood. Oral history becomes a historical reality for black culture and identifies black cultures within the sphere of historical development. Parris is continually showing how the voices of black thinkers all too much are relegated to a specific space or time in history, rather than looking at these people/ideas/theories as seminal thoughts which deserve recognition in the production of philosophical advancement. 

 

What Being Apart does, is portraying a culture that constantly refuses to acknowledge the works and thoughts of black people, and forces us to remember our tract of societal evolution being based on the ideas and Western canon of white, racist intellectuals. Without stopping there, Parris, calls for a recognition of the importance of black thought on person hood and life, well before noted existential philosophers, and yet the black thinkers are often and outright ignored, at least on the notion of philosophical output. What this book does, which is why I think it needs to be read by all, is it asks can we truly have a just society, when so many of our ideas are based in Western white hegemony. 

Parris states that this is a continuation of the discursive resistance and existential probing present in the works of thinkers who have inspired me. I feel we are lucky know that Parris will continue on in this work, "It is crucial that progressive scholars continue to unite to ensure accuracy and integrity in academic knowledge production, an the society and culture at large." I can't think of a better way to end.

 

Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism is to be checked out right now, if you have an interest in any of the keywords in the title. With articles that flesh out the idea of non-plan, planning that comes from the people, a movement that seriously challenged the standard mode of architecture from the architect's hand and hoped to have it be more open. With articles from Colin Ward, Cedric Price, Paul Barker, Malcolm Miles, Simon Sadler and more, we get 18 essays regarding Non-Plan and architecture that came from an idea of participation within architecture.

 

A book like this is invaluable to the testament of the potential of ideas to be pushed in many different modes. Starting with Paul Barker's actual article entitled "Non-Plan" which is supposed to be questioning the town and country planning, in favor of a plan that allows people to help, if not take control of creating the environment that they want to live in. Of course much of this rests in people able to fulfill the empowerment handed to them, and not just settle for the idea of an open platform in which corporations can do as they please in an open environment.