- Aug 2022
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Local file Local file
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there is a problem of determining not only what he saidbut also, more importantly, what he meant.
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- Jul 2022
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Local file Local file19841
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'I don't think it's anything—I mean, I don't think it was ever put to anyuse. That's what I like about it. It's a little chunk of history that they'veforgotten to alter. It's a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew howto read it.'
Walter and Julia are examining a glass paperweight in George Orwell's 1984 without having context of what it is or for what it was used.
This is the same sort of context collapse caused by distance in time and memory that archaeologists face when examining found objects.
How does one pull out the meaning from such distant objects in an exegetical way? How can we more reliably rebuild or recreate lost contexts?
Link to: - Stonehenge is a mnemonic device - mnemonic devices in archaeological contexts (Neolithic carved stone balls
Some forms of orality-based methods and practices can be viewed as a method of "reading" physical objects.
Ideograms are an evolution on the spectrum from orality to literacy.
It seems odd to be pulling these sorts of insight out my prior experiences and reading while reading something so wholly "other". But isn't this just what "myths" in oral cultures actually accomplish? We link particular ideas to pieces of story, song, art, and dance so that they may be remembered. In this case Orwell's glass paperweight has now become a sort of "talking rock" for me. Certainly it isn't done in any sort of sense that Orwell would have expected, presumed, or even intended.
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- Jun 2022
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teachingamericanhistory.org teachingamericanhistory.org
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https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/patrick-henry-virginia-ratifying-convention-va/
While gerrymandering isn't brought up explicitly here, the underlying principles are railed against heavily.
Some interesting things applicable to the rise of Donald J. Trump hiding in here.
Interesting to read this in its historical context versus our present context. So much can be read into his words from our current context, while others can extract dramatically different views--particularly by Constitutional originalists.
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- May 2022
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www.politico.com www.politico.com
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“Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right,” Alito adds. Alito’s draft argues that rights protected by the Constitution but not explicitly mentioned in it – so-called unenumerated rights – must be strongly rooted in U.S. history and tradition. That form of analysis seems at odds with several of the court’s recent decisions, including many of its rulings backing gay rights.
Could be interesting to look at this from the dual perspective of eisegesis vs. exegesis.
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- Apr 2022
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Theories of note-taking can tell us about how memory and writingwere understood, and practices of note-taking, about the tools that proved mostuseful in managing textual information in early modern Europe.
Historical note taking practices can tell us many things aside from just the ways in which textual information was managed. They can also tell us about how people lived, how they thought, how they used memory and writing and how these things were understood culturally.
We do however need to be careful in how we interpret these documents historically. We need to attempt to view them exegetically and not eisegetically. We also need to be careful to look at them from a "large world" perspective and not presume that small things had large and heavy influence on things to come in the future.
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