Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970625120813.1b1f43a0@pop.ou.edu>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: John Konopak <jkonopak@ou.edu>
Subject: Re: Masturbation Spandrels?
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:04:09 -0500
Anent this thread:
It used to be said:
"horses sweat, men perspire,
and women get in a dew."
Do dogs "masturbate?" Or
do they lick their genitals
because they can [as would I
if I could(;h)
--here's an anti-anti-masturbation spandrel:
'Jack be limber/Jack be long/
If Jack can lick/On his own dong.
And Jill/Be limb'rer still!'].
Meantime, at the risk of appearing naive, how is this idea of memetics
really an improvement from what could be called "quantitative semiotics," a
la Greimas; and if it pretends to universalization of systems of meanings of
cultural practices, how does it escape the charge of reductivism? Is this
the set that doesn't contain itself? Then at what point does it start to be
possible to claim, as ie Herrnstein and Murray have done with
"intelligence," that certain sorts of folks just don't have all the
receptors, or some such other (arbitrary) facility, absence of which, prima
facie, deprives them of the right to full participation in such crucial
conversations as those resulting in the equitable distribution of social
resources?
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____ ____ _ _
| | \ | / John Konopak ------------------------
| | | | / EDUC/ILAC | You can lead a horse |
| | / |__/ University of Oklahoma | to water; but you |
| |--/ | \ Norman OK 73019 | can't make him surf! |
| |hD | \ jkonopak@ou.edu ------------------------
|__/ _|_ _|_ _\_Ph: 405-325-1498||FX: 405-325-4061
"People know what they do; and sometimes they know why they do it.
But what they don't know is what what they do does." -- M. Foucault
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| [Standard Disclaimer: Irremediable intertextuality, |
| and/or consequent and/or collateral intersubjectivity |
| notwithstanding,opinions here are as much "my own" |
| as I can make them. But still I wish I'd said: |
| "Those who can, do; those who understand, teach." |
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