Another addition to this list from my love and sex class. I've only, at the time of writing, read 2 chapters from this, being the original "The Right to Sex" essay, and the chapter titled "Talking to my students about Porn." Srinivasan does some very good work communicating the complexity of these issues, but I've found that these chapters at least have not been particularly claim-oriented. That is to say that I do not really understand the central arguments of her essays beyond a notion of "it's complicated," and I'm not sure if that is my fault. I do think it's an incredibly informative read, however, and despite my gripes (which tend to mirror those of Andrea Long Chu), I quite enjoy reading this. [4-8-26]
This one I've barely started, but was lucky to pick up at one of Zizek's book signings. It is shaping up alright, and Zizek presents his points in a characteristically and enjoyably Zizekian way, but I do think that Zizeks recent form of critical theory has unfortunately bored me a bit with its sort of over-accessibility. This is to say that his recent writings haven't been particularly mind-blowing or revolutionary, and presented with significantly less lacanian-hegelian language than usual. It just is no longer a revolutionary thing to say that liberalism lays the foundation for a new fascism, which to my knowledge is at the center of his overall point. [4-8-26]
I hate reading scanned PDF files for my classes, so I picked this up from the library (I've been loving my school's library recently) to read for my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. I wrote a short paper, about 3 pages, on Foucaults argument and I think it's very interesting. I am still working on this one, but I think there is a lot to be said about the hypothesis that sexual identity is simply a function of power and performance. This concept and the framing of the book is certainly something I will come back to in my future writings [4-8-26]
This is one that I checked out from my school library because I'm auditing a grad lecture on psychoanalysis. It is incredibly dense and like 900 pages, of which I will only read about 100 for this class. I really loved the chapter titled “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Funciton." Super interesting work on the formation of the self in very characteristically psychoanalytic writing. I don’t love having to read it but I do like what I’m getting out of it. [2-23-26]
This is a novel I've read many times and never finished for some reason. I planned on working through it over my winter break this year, and got most of the way through, but got really distracted and addicted to Terraria for that month, so not much else got done. Salingers writing style is just so addictive and fun to read, and I love coming back to his work, even if it’s always following a failure to finish it. I wont let myself lose the page this time and I will be finishing it as soon as school lets up![2-23-26]
I'm reading this for a history of philosophy class, and I think that its alright, if not a little overrated. Descartes is a good thinker, and honestly I do really like Discourse on Method as a seminal work of science, but the Meditations, to me, do not provide anything crazy. The first two meditations are pretty good, but he tends to lose me especially with the god argument. Stick with me here, but I think this is kind of comparable to the Beatles. Both are kind of boring and dont seem to say a lot looking retrospectively from the modern landscape, but only because they set the revolutionary standard of their respective mediums. Like both, however, not really my cup of tea. [2-23-26]
This book isn't really what I'm used to considering my area of study. I read this for a interdisciplinary Philosophy & Psychology class, and I definitely expected this to be more of the former. It turned out to be what I think can be most essentially described as a series of explanations of cognitive biases of data analysis. I think it does its job in what is a pretty good way, though I think the actual arguments (especially those on what we ‘ought’ to do about our biases and tendencies to misrepresent data) fall a good bit flat. Really, though, I think it is super essential to understand the contents of this book in any setting involving understanding and representation of data and truth.[2-23-26]