Word: notionalism
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...minced guts of a goldfish. Unlike filmmaker Werner Herzog, for example, whose macabre yet stunning Lessons of Darkness portrays the burning Kuwaiti oil fields of the Gulf War, many performance artists do not court any kind of beauty. Instead, they often redeem their projects with the vague notion of “protest” or discourse. Shvarts claimed her aim was to inspire “some sort of discourse” (what sort, we might wonder?). Vargas says he wanted to draw attention to the common fate of stray Nicaraguan dogs...
...course, the notion of discourse inspired by art isn’t, in itself, shallow or boring. There is a long and venerable tradition of using shock to stir the art-appreciator’s conscience. Surrealist shock-art sought to tear open the subconscious, politicizing the personal realm of Oedipal complexes and bourgeois sexuality. And not all controversial modern ideas are petty and narcissistic. German artist Gregor Schnedier was recently pilloried for trying to bring real death into an art gallery; he has constructed a room for dying and has offered it to anyone who wants...
What seems like an easy choice, however, will not be so obvious. A coherent vision for Gen Ed, with its notion of engaged intellectualism and global citizenship, of which we saw glimpses in the preliminary report from the Task Force on General Education, has quickly ceded to a nebulous, uninspiring hodgepodge of academic disciplines that demonstrates little in the way of a singular, motivating, guiding philosophy. The consequences of this decline are profoundly troublesome, as a slow start to Gen Ed threatens to banish incoming classes of Harvard undergraduates to an incoherent education. To hasten the development...
...sense that Gen Ed is guided by a unified vision of global leadership and engagement. If the program hopes to be successful, Hammonds must use her influence, wielding the power of the pulpit, to infuse Gen Ed with a coherent set of philosophical underpinnings and a truly substantive notion of education...
...Though it does nothing to overturn the fundamentally problematic notion of “the continent,” a continental Middle East would do much to change the external and internal perceptions of the region, starting at the elementary school level. It would provide geopolitical unity, while counteracting the Eurocentric paradigm that for generations has shaped our worldview. Our nomenclature is long overdue for a change, and what better way to shake things up than a continental shift...