Near Silence in the Library

Not a lot of blogging of late. Some of my pithier updates now appear on Facebook or Twitter. Liking the sound of my own voice won't cut it anymore, not that it ever did. As Bourdieu reminds us:

Now, if there is one thing that our ‘modern’ or ‘postmodern’ philosophers have in common, beyond the conflicts that divide the, it is this excessive confidence in the power of language. It is the typical illusion of the lector, who can regard an academic commentary as a political act or the critique of texts as a feat of resistance, and experience revolutions in the order of words as radical revolutions in the order of things. (Pascalian Meditations, p.2)

Send her Victorian

I was tickled to read a recent report in the Independent about the decline of British stag weekends in Riga, Latvia. "I imagined that Englishmen would all be real gentlemen, like Sherlock Holmes," said 21 year-old student Marika. Unfortunately, "they are little more than animals."

Which nationalities have most disappointed you by not resembling fictional characters in late Victorian fiction? Perhaps Chinese men are insufficiently like Fu Manchu? Romanians who differ from Count Dracula? Mark your entry "modern nationalities which differ from their fictitious counterparts" and send answers on a postcard to ...