Does anyone else find it ironic that Google is promoting Banned Books Week?
Now Google has joined the party [party?]. At google.com/bannedbooks, you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20th century which have been challenged or banned.
Oh really? Google, your left hand promotes “Celebrate your freedom to read”, while your other denies the same rights to the Chinese as you censor your search results.
F. Scott Fitzgerald and J. D. Salinger? Can you get Orwell down from the shelf for me, Big Brother?
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but actually the Chinese gov’t does the censoring and Google complies to the censors’ list.
September 13th, 2006, at 1:08 am #Granted, but I wouldn’t say they “comply” as in “I was only following orders.” They have a little more autonomy in the matter.
September 13th, 2006, at 8:00 am #Hey Steven,
Very nice blog indeed! Now, in response to the whole Google situation, since when did Google start censoring Chinese content or materials and if indeed the Chinese government is doing the censoring, what exactly are they censoring? I just want to know…
And yes, I see why you would be perplexed about the whole situation. Why read banned books when some of the content provided by Google is banned or “censored”. Hmmm….
September 19th, 2006, at 9:28 pm #hey,
i scrolled down and read a little further. what are your favorite works by foucault?
i own “on grammatology” but have never been disciplined enough to slog through it. how did it treat you?
September 21st, 2006, at 12:12 am #Vann-Ly: Google, when moving into China, decided to comply with the government’s wishes and censor search results. So China gives Google a list of words, like “democracy”, and Google refuses to do any searches with those words. Of course, there are technical ways to get around that.
mercedes: I like all of the studies of power, Discipline and Punish, Birth of the Clinic. I have a copy of On the Order of Things, one of his mainly theoretical works, but I have not read it yet.
As for Derrida, I have read a lot by him, I took a fourth-year seminar just on Derrida in undergrad. The book is great, but I bet it would be hard if I wasn’t already experienced with his writing. But, I think it is the book that explains everything in the later works that I didn’t really understand. If Derrida has a “theory,” which he would argue against, it is there.
September 21st, 2006, at 9:14 am #the order of things is particulary topical for the work that we do in FIS (i think).
i’ve done some derrida reading, my methodology is to kind of let my eyes drift down the page.
do you like raymond williams? or zizek? did you take that undergraduate course at u of t? in what department?
September 21st, 2006, at 9:28 am #I’m sorry I haven’t read anything of them.
I read Derrida here in Toronto in the Philosophy department, where I did a Specialist in Philosophy. A Specialist is like a Major with no Minor, cause you were too Kant and Hegel crazy to take anything else.
September 21st, 2006, at 9:40 am #