Ligues

Studying France's darker moments has, in turn, caused me to see the whole world as somehow related to them. Watching "Goodbye Columbus," the movie based on Philip Roth's novella, while reading Vichy France and the Jews, made me see the whole "JAP" phenomenon in a new light--why might a German-Jewish-American father (evidenced by Mr. Potemkin's odd capitalization of nouns), in the late 1950s-early 1960s, want to spoil his children rotten? Why might a wedding in this culture involved obsessive food intake? These are just things to think about.

Also worth noting--while demands that women be thin and beautiful regularly draw critiques from progressive types, how about the apparent popularity, even in 2007, of racial exclusion affecting women and men in campus social clubs? From DePauw sororities to Princeton eating clubs, the idea that the best people really are of a certain race remains acceptable, or at least is accepted. Institutions such as minority dorms or campus centers always struck me as problematic because they necessarily lead to the creation of white dorms and white campus centers, racializing campus institutions that otherwise wouldn't be thus affected. But how can schools best respond to racist clubs, if not creating other clubs for each race?

I don't know, but it's time to finish two different collaboration-themed books, so I'll let other people figure this out for the time being.