Toril Moi

@profdgd In the 19th century: Strindberg's The Father -- a man spiraling into madness because he has come to doubt that his child is actually his. (Response to Ibsen's Wild Duck) Also about infernal power struggle between men and women (as seen by the antifeminist Strindberg...)

The reading list for next semester's Literature of Mental Illness course. I feel like I'm missing a book of poems or another play. Suggestions?

@theiaincameron go to holden - Wittgenstein did! you can then go and see the (reconstructed) cabin he built there.

Not many villages that are more than 200km from the open sea are able to boast sunbathing by the sea in summer… /END

The small Norwegian village of Skjolden (pop: 238) looks absolutely unremarkable on a map. Little more than a small settlement in inland Norway, surrounded by pretty mountains. However, and remarkably, Skjolden is actually a seaside village. 1/n

@Kierkegaarddd Different books at different ages (ages are just approximations): at 15: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. at 25: Julia Kristeva, Révolution du langage poétique at 35: Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction at 45: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Drop the book that changed how you see the world. Any genre, any era.

@gregorymconway it’s completely compelling, absorbing — a deep reflection on history - the account of the clash between Kristin and her father’s bourgeois values as against erlend’s feudal ones), a novel of love and marriage, of faith, and death - complete existential - and unmodernist too.

@TorilMoi Oh, Undset is a great suggestion and exactly what I should read!

It’s time for the first tome of 2026, what should I read next that’s say… 750+ pages. Or any other suggestions.

@DmpPatterson actually, my current long-term research topic is precisely the question of the new. And I am one (of many) speakers. So now i also have to try to tell myself something new...

@TorilMoi I hope you hear something new

Register for the Jameson conference at Duke April 10-12! "Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory." Click here for the registration form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

witty and true to life

@DmpPatterson oh. well it depends on what the speakers actually say, i think

@TorilMoi I meant that perhaps this theme has played itself out. No need to recycle

@DmpPatterson not sure what that means? - but the new always emerges from the old

@TorilMoi This is so, 90s?

@SimlaDogangun there’s an email address in the link - write to the organizers to ask?

@TorilMoi Very exciting! I wonder whether online attendance is an option?

@oznurkarakas there’s an email address in the link - write to the organizers and ask?

Hoping online attendance will be available.

I'll be traveling for the first time in a long time! Looking forward to speaking and listening at the Modes of Reading Symposium at Berkeley on Thursday and Friday this week! townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/events/close-d…

@CliffordSosis @CliffordSosis Hegel on women? Incapable of reaching highest level of ethical understanding, incapable of conceptual thinking - like plants, they learn "by osmosis" - But what exactly is "motivated" reasoning? What would "unmotivated reasoning" be? Random thoughts?

Which philosophers views are clearly most distorted by motivated reasoning?

@NCDOT_Triangle - can you please plow/salt the steep hill on Mount Sinai Road, in Orange County between Kerley and Taproot? Three cars going up that hill got stuck and needed a tow truck this morning! It's preventing people from getting to work!

is verizon down in north carolina?

"Parce que l'idéal de la femme, séduisante mais pas pute, bien mariée mais pas effacée, travaillant mais sans trop réussir, pour ne pas écraser son homme, mince mais pas névrosée par la nourriture, restant indéfiniment jeune sans se faire défigurer par les chirurgiens de l'esthétique, maman épanouie mais pas accaparée par les couches et les devoirs d'école, bonne maîtresse de maison mais pas bonniche traditionnelle, cultivée mais moins qu'un homme, cette femme heureuse qu'on nous brandit tout le temps sous le nez, celle à laquelle on devrait faire l'effort de ressembler, à part qu'elle a l'air de beaucoup s'emmerder pour pas grand-chose, de toutes façons je ne l'ai jamais croisée, nulle part. Je crois bien qu'elle n'existe pas." Virginie Despentes, King Kong théorie

Hail the Oxford comma

@NobelPrize Dear friends in Stockholm - Camus was born in 1913 - L'Etranger was published in 1942 - he was 29, not 20. Still impressive, of course.

Idrees Kahloon @imkahloon informative essay in @TheAtlantic about the new translation of Raspail's horrific vision of monster immigrant hordes invading France, The Camp of the Saints, quotes my colleague Corina Stan, and links to her brilliant chapter on the book's significance.