the_lady_lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_lady_lily) wrote2010-08-09 10:25 pm
the_lady_lily) wrote2010-08-09 10:25 pm
Entry tags:
Bibliography
The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer
I read this book because it's one of Those Books - if you read around feminism enough and start doing a bit of historical survey, it's a key text of second wave feminism. We're in the third wave now, of course (she says suavely), and things have shifted. Some of those shifts are painfully obvious here - things like Greer's frankly problematic stance towards anyone on the LBGT spectrum including intersex children. There's also a rather worryingly positive view of any kind of society that existed before the twentieth century - lots of romanticising of any lifestyle that doesn't revolve around the suburban family of the 1960s and 1970s (the book was published in 1970). Also a considerable fetishism on communal living - Greer suggests housewives should share a washing machine between three families, but of course fails to consider things like how the hell that works in practice and in the kind of layout of the 1970s suburb.
That said! The book's main thesis is that women are conditioned away from their sexuality, tamed into submission and taught that to be a good little passive consumer is the way forward, and that this leads both to vast amounts of Nasty Things from repression and also to men loathing these two-dimensional vapid creatures they find themselves forced to live with. (Greer is also, incidentally, completely pessimistic about marriage standing any chance whatsoever. Which... well... if you're going to take her premises, you can see why, but I have to say I don't think her arguments hold up in 2010 as well as they did forty years ago. I know this is progress and a good thing, but it did put my teeth on edge.)
In some ways, this carries on from Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique; in others, it picks up the demand for education and equal personhood that Mary Wollstonecraft started in A Vindication Of The Rights of Women. It doesn't hold now, and the fact that the contents of this book became so popular is part of the reason for its own considerable datedness. I read it for historical background rather than current knowledge, and I'm glad I have - but be warned that if you're not in a historical mood, pick something rather more up to date.
Redeeming The Text - Charles Martindale
You know, I hadn't realised this was published in the Roman Literature and Its Contexts series, which says a lot. This is the book that really started off reception theory in Classics as a discipline. Martindale is a forerunner in this field, and propounds his own flavour of reception vigorously. The details of the debate have been back and forth in posts on my [academic] filter, and those who don't see them already are unlikely to be interested in them at any length, so let me summarise. Martindale's main point is that meaning is generated at the point of reception, and thus every meaning is affected by the historical moment in which it is created - not to mention all the receptions that have preceeded it. This very short book lays out the basic theory that lies behind these assumptions (taking a lot of German theory as read, I may add, and I don't approve) and then gives some elegant workings out of the implications of said theory. It's only a hundred pages or so long, and I found it comparatively easy going - but that said, I certainly wouldn't point anyone to it as the first book they read on reception theory. When you're genuinely interested, yes, go to Martindale. But start off with something a little lighter.
Latin Historians - C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman
Briefly noted - I'd made a note to pick this up for prof dev work and I can't really remember why. It is, howeer, an excellent Classical Association publication that essentially goes through Sallust, Livy and Tacitus, plus the fragmentary periods of early Republican and everyone else, outlining themes, concerns, Stuff These Historians Do and so forth. It was published in 1997 so is moderately in date, but it's also a great survey of who's who in the ancient historical field. I'd actually come across everyone mentioned (and didn't that make me feel special), but I really wish I'd known about this brief and succinct book when I was preparing for my comprehensive exams - it would have made the whole historian side of things quite a lot less stressful. Good for checking I knew what I was about and a general survey of the land, not great for doing work on a more advanced level. But that's fine - I suspect all I was after was a knowledge check-up anyway, and a monograph like this does the job just fine.
I read this book because it's one of Those Books - if you read around feminism enough and start doing a bit of historical survey, it's a key text of second wave feminism. We're in the third wave now, of course (she says suavely), and things have shifted. Some of those shifts are painfully obvious here - things like Greer's frankly problematic stance towards anyone on the LBGT spectrum including intersex children. There's also a rather worryingly positive view of any kind of society that existed before the twentieth century - lots of romanticising of any lifestyle that doesn't revolve around the suburban family of the 1960s and 1970s (the book was published in 1970). Also a considerable fetishism on communal living - Greer suggests housewives should share a washing machine between three families, but of course fails to consider things like how the hell that works in practice and in the kind of layout of the 1970s suburb.
That said! The book's main thesis is that women are conditioned away from their sexuality, tamed into submission and taught that to be a good little passive consumer is the way forward, and that this leads both to vast amounts of Nasty Things from repression and also to men loathing these two-dimensional vapid creatures they find themselves forced to live with. (Greer is also, incidentally, completely pessimistic about marriage standing any chance whatsoever. Which... well... if you're going to take her premises, you can see why, but I have to say I don't think her arguments hold up in 2010 as well as they did forty years ago. I know this is progress and a good thing, but it did put my teeth on edge.)
In some ways, this carries on from Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique; in others, it picks up the demand for education and equal personhood that Mary Wollstonecraft started in A Vindication Of The Rights of Women. It doesn't hold now, and the fact that the contents of this book became so popular is part of the reason for its own considerable datedness. I read it for historical background rather than current knowledge, and I'm glad I have - but be warned that if you're not in a historical mood, pick something rather more up to date.
Redeeming The Text - Charles Martindale
You know, I hadn't realised this was published in the Roman Literature and Its Contexts series, which says a lot. This is the book that really started off reception theory in Classics as a discipline. Martindale is a forerunner in this field, and propounds his own flavour of reception vigorously. The details of the debate have been back and forth in posts on my [academic] filter, and those who don't see them already are unlikely to be interested in them at any length, so let me summarise. Martindale's main point is that meaning is generated at the point of reception, and thus every meaning is affected by the historical moment in which it is created - not to mention all the receptions that have preceeded it. This very short book lays out the basic theory that lies behind these assumptions (taking a lot of German theory as read, I may add, and I don't approve) and then gives some elegant workings out of the implications of said theory. It's only a hundred pages or so long, and I found it comparatively easy going - but that said, I certainly wouldn't point anyone to it as the first book they read on reception theory. When you're genuinely interested, yes, go to Martindale. But start off with something a little lighter.
Latin Historians - C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman
Briefly noted - I'd made a note to pick this up for prof dev work and I can't really remember why. It is, howeer, an excellent Classical Association publication that essentially goes through Sallust, Livy and Tacitus, plus the fragmentary periods of early Republican and everyone else, outlining themes, concerns, Stuff These Historians Do and so forth. It was published in 1997 so is moderately in date, but it's also a great survey of who's who in the ancient historical field. I'd actually come across everyone mentioned (and didn't that make me feel special), but I really wish I'd known about this brief and succinct book when I was preparing for my comprehensive exams - it would have made the whole historian side of things quite a lot less stressful. Good for checking I knew what I was about and a general survey of the land, not great for doing work on a more advanced level. But that's fine - I suspect all I was after was a knowledge check-up anyway, and a monograph like this does the job just fine.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
'She sacrifices what she does not have, a self.'
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes, I agree. It's not an entry-level book (however much it pretends to be), but if you have any interest in reception you have to read it sooner or later.
no subject