indeed may not be quite possible But I have no doubt it is worth a try It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses It has been traditional to treat thought, so to speak, as an instrument of reason Good thought is right reason, and its efficacy is measured against the laws of logic or induction Indeed, in its most recent computational form, it is a view of thought that has sped some of its enthusiasts to the belief that all thought is reducible to machine computability But logical thought is not the only or even the most ubiquitous mode of thought For the last several years, I have been looking at another kind of thought (see, eg, Bruner, 1986), one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form of thought that goes into the construction not of logical or inductive arguments but of stories or narratives What I want to do now is to extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis of the stories we tell about our lives: our "autobiographies" Philosophically speaking, the approach I shall take to narrative is a constructivist one a view that takes as its central premise that "world making" is the principal function of mind, whether in the sciences or in the arts But the moment one applies a constructivist view of narrative to the self-narrative, to the autobiography, one is faced with dilemmas Take, for example, the constructivist view that "stories" do not "happen" in the real world but, rather, are constructed in people's heads Or as Henry James once put it, stories happen to people who know how to tell them Does that mean that our autobiographies are constructed, that they had better be viewed not as a record of what

Life as Narrative

In this revised second edition, Deirdre McCloskey demonstrates how economic discourse employs metaphor, authority, symmetry and other rhetorical means of persuasion. ""The Rhetoric of Economics"" shows economists to be human persuaders and poets of the marketplace, even in their most technical and mathematical moods. It is further enhanced by three new chapters and two new bibliographies.

The Rhetoric of Economics

The study of race and ethnic conflict historically has been hampered by inadequate and simplistic theories. I contend that the central problem of the various approaches to the study of racial phenomena is their lack of a structural theory of racism. I review traditional approaches and alternative approaches to the study of racism, and discuss their limitations. Following the leads suggested by some of the alternative frameworks, I advance a structural theory of racism based on the notion of racialized social systems. "The habit of considering racism as a mental quirk, as a psychological flaw, must be abandoned." -Frantz Fanon (1967:77) he area of race and ethnic studies lacks a _ sound theoretical apparatus. To complicate matters, many analysts of racial matters have abandoned the serious theorization and reconceptualization of their central topic: racism. Too many social analysts researching racism assume that the phenomenon is selfevident, and therefore either do not provide a definition or provide an elementary definition (Schuman, Steeh, and Bobo 1985; Sniderman and Piazza 1993). Nevertheless, whether implicitly or explicitly, most analysts regard racism as a purely ideological phenomenon.

Rethinking racism: toward a structural interpretation *

The Logic of Violence in Civil War: List of Tables and Figures

This essay proposes a theory of human communication based on a conception of persons as homo narrans. It compares and contrasts this view with the traditional rational perspective on symbolic interaction. The viability of the narrative paradigm and its attendant notions of reason and rationality are demonstrated through an extended analysis of key aspects of the current nuclear war controversy and a brief application to The Epic of Gilgamesh. The narrative paradigm synthesizes two strands in rhetorical theory: the argumentative, persuasive theme and the literary, aesthetic theme.

Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument

Russie folie poésie

Lumières! : un hèritage pour demain

Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949), the most prominent Bulgarian Communist leader and the chief of the Komintern between 1935 and 1941, left a private diary which has recently been published (in Bulgarian in 1997; in English in 2003). One contribution of this remarkably rich document is the portrait of Stalin it draws: Dimitrov met him frequently and transcribed faithfully his words. Among other features revealed by this portrait are the nationalistic turn of his communism; his pragmatic appreciation of the balance of powers; and hypocrisy as a systematic strategy.

Stalin close up

Bakhtin, the Critics, and Folklore@@@The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750@@@Mikhail Bakhtin@@@The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture@@@The Politics and Poetics of Transgression@@@Carnival and Theater: Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England@@@Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle@@@The Place of the Stage: License, Play and Power in Renaissance England

Racialist doctrine, which will be the readers chief concern here, can be presented as coherent set of propositions. Racism is an ancient form of behavior that is probably found worldwide; racialism is a movement of ideas born in Western Europe whose period of flowering extends from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth. Several common features indicate that racialism belongs to the spiritual family of scientism. Racialist theories are no longer in fashion today, but the scientistic doctrine continues to flourish. The “epoch” is not actually the result of the era in which one lives, but rather the result of the phase of an internal evolution proper to each human group; in other words, it combines the two preceding factors, yet it becomes a determining factor in turn. And it must be said that in practice, physical characteristics play only a small part in Taine's analyses; thus, contrary to what his own distinctions imply, his races are nations, understood as “cultures”.

Tzvetan Todorov

Papers

Russie folie poésie

Lumières! : un hèritage pour demain

Stalin close up

Race and Racism