Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA17551 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:59:07 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:56:23 -0500 Subject: culture and memetics From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B6888484.6960%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745BCD@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
on 1/15/01 9:30 AM, Vincent Campbell at v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk wrote:
> <Look, I'm not saying accept this old stuff hook line and sinker.
> But I do
>> think there's work of value, more in psychoanalysis than in Jung. And,
>> just
>> as there are thinkers who have rejected psychoanalysis, so there are
>> thinkers who, for the last 30 years, have been working to reconstruct
>> psychoanalytic ideas on more modern intellectual foundations derived from
>> ethology, cognitive psychology, systems theory, and the neurosciences.>
>>
> Isn't memetics an effort to do the same for cultural studies?
Well, if by cultural studies you mean the body of work that's been done
under that specific rubric for 20 years, no, memeticists don't even know
about that work.
The people who are trying to reconstruct psychoanalysis are familiar with
the ideas. My basic point about memetics is that it seems to be
substantially ignorant of other ways of studying culture. So it's not
trying to reconstruct anything; it's trying to do it all over again, from
the beginnning.
However, the most important single characteristic of memetics, even what I
am (contentiously) calling orthodox memetics, is that it views culture as a
separate domain of objects and processes. It is not just another facet of
biology. Culture has "slipped the genetic leash," to use a phrase I
associate with Blackmore. Old-style sociogiology tried to yoke culture to
the genes, and I think that evolutionary psychology is, in effect, trying to
do that as well.
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