Reviews for Feeling Modern: The Eccentricities of Public Life

The average rating for Feeling Modern: The Eccentricities of Public Life based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-07-27 00:00:00 Lonnie Albright I was initially put off from this by the foreword, which focuses on why a man would become interested in reclaiming the feminine (because he was a lawyer defending a group of women in a wage dispute) how unqualified for this topic he was (unfinished PhD in politics and several years as a litigator) followed by a bunch of very startling assumptions about what the feminine is. To be feminine is to be peaceful, at one with the earth, in tune with growing things, to enjoy beauty and create it. So he says. I almost gave up there. A bit much to be told by a dude without a degree in anything related to women or even subjugation what it is that defines womanhood, and the implication that he was doing "new" research on where women are throughout the last 3400 years of history was ludicrous to the point of satire. The Minoan exploration was feeble, and seems to directly contradict itself. He discusses symbols as having meaning outside of themselves, some connective tissue of some sort, and later discusses stories, but apparently not in Minos. In Minos, it's IMPOSSIBLE that what art was depicting was stories, it must have just been about the divinity of the feminine. As we get closer to the rise of the Greeks, the scholarship gets much more solid, and begins to tread more familiar ground. Indeed, as a resource for a quick overview of art history and the significance in stories (visual and verbal) to promote patriarchy, it's not half bad. From then on it becomes much more cogent, the assumptions much more supported by the work of other scholars, and is, in general, a good synopsis of prominent theories in the fields of related academics like history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and literature. My frustrations, though, remain. As a legal scholar and an academic, he knows better than to assume anything. This sort of laziness is not helpful to demonstrating the causal link between historical erasure and present day struggles, and demonstrates to me that the author has not confronted some of his own biases honestly. I am hopeful that since this book was written, he has wrestled with this more.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-03-11 00:00:00 Gary Massey What an interesting, intriguing book. I couldn't help but hear a petulant little child shouting "See? I told you so!" just about every other page. When you learn the author's reasons for writing this book, that sentiment gets reinforced greatly. Do I believe the author makes his case? Meh. Much of what he writes about is borderline old news. Does he put old data together in new ways? Again, Meh. Depends on whom you studied with and how willing you were to think independently. Did I learn anything? Meh^3. I made one note of a new take on something. One note in 300 pages doesn't endear me to this book. It might in another book but, as I wrote above, I kept hearing this whiny kid shouting that he was right and the rest of whomever was wrong. It got tiring after a while. On a more academic take, the author makes too many errors (or his copyeditors and technical editors suck), there's way too much conjecture/hypothesis/assumptions offered as fact, no where near enough evidence for many of the claims (perhaps because this is more a popsci book than anything else, although I wouldn't quite qualify it as "popular science"). I could see using this book to teach debate, though, as in "Debate the merits of the argument on page ...". Is this a worthwhile book for people without anthro/archeo/cultural/linguistics backgrounds? Yeah, I think they'd enjoy it. I could see this book in a 101-style survey course, not much more. People with more background might enjoy it as a connect-the-dots-in-a-weird-way study. My biggest challenge with the book is the author's insistence that he's providing new information or at least repackaging existing information. Not quite. Maybe he's bringing it to a new audience (a worthwhile activity, definitely). Unfortunately it left me more amused than intrigued, probably not the author's intent.