Intellectual Affairs

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.

The most recent Intellectual Affairs columns:

The End of the End of the End of History?  Aug. 27

The conflict between Russia and Georgia was a turning point of some kind. Scott McLemee wonders what’s the big idea.... more

Cogito Interruptus  Aug. 20

Texting and instant messaging are the wave of the future? Scott McLemee is just too ecstatic. more

Poli Sci Fi  Aug. 13

The presidential campaigns are running themselves into the ground. Scott McLemee thinks space is the place.... more

Past columns

Below, find all previously published Intellectual Affairs columns.

• It’s All About the Oil  Aug. 6
• Lucy in Disguise  July 30
• A Debt of Honor — Skipped Out On  July 23
• It’s All Geek to Me  July 16
• Towards Helhaven  July 9
• Digital Daze  July 2
• Plenty to Go Around  June 25
• Books Exposed, Part Two  June 18
• Two Hundred and Counting  June 11
• Books Exposed  June 4
• From Plymouth Rock to Plato’s Retreat  May 28
• Sex: The Revolution  May 21
• The Workhorse  May 14
• Becoming Richard Rorty  May 7
• ‘All the Sad Young Literary Men’  April 30
• Deployed  April 23
• French Theory  April 16
• In Search of Max Faber  April 9
• The 2.0 Decade?  April 2
• All for Nought?  March 26
• The Truth? I Can’t Handle the Truth!  March 19
• The Soiling of Old Glory  March 12
• The Whole World Was Watching  March 5
• Bookshelf and Self  Feb. 27
• Zombie Nation  Feb. 20
• Objection!  Feb. 13
• Blue Skies Ahead?  Feb. 6
• The New York Review of (Little Red) Books  Jan. 30
• Ballad of the Borderland  Jan. 23
• Hillary-ious  Jan. 16
• The Hopped-Up Conference Hopper  Jan. 9
• Back to Methuselah  Jan. 2
• Studying the Inhumanities  Dec. 19
• Starting Out in the Evening  Dec. 12
• Around the Web  Dec. 5
• Beyond Islamophobofascism  Nov. 28
• Man Bites Dog  Nov. 21
• Talking to Himself  Nov. 14
• Makin’ Bacon  Nov. 7
• Regrets, I’ve Had a Few  Oct. 31
• To the Things Themselves  Oct. 24, 2007
• Be Aware (Beware)  Oct. 17, 2007
• Good Grief  Oct. 10, 2007
• The Bulldozer and the Big Tent  Oct. 3, 2007
• Mark of Zotero  Sept. 26, 2007
• Mess o’ Mobilizations  Sept. 19, 2007
• Wide-Stance Sociology  Sept. 12, 2007
• Tough Liberal  Sept. 5, 2007
• 40 Years of ‘The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual’  Aug. 29, 2007
• Oh, Canada  Aug. 22, 2007
• Open Library  Aug. 8, 2007
• Sailing from Ithaka  Aug. 1, 2007
• Off the Shelf  July 25, 2007
• Pottering Around  July 18, 2007
• The LaRouche Youth Movement  July 11, 2007
• Casaubon on Viagra  June 27, 2007
• Mass Culture 2.0  June 20, 2007
• Requiem for a Heavyweight  June 13, 2007
• C.L.R. James Meets Tony Soprano  June 6, 2007
• Bookapalooza  May 30, 2007
• Beach Blanket Bingo  May 23, 2007
• Speak, Memory  May 16, 2007
• Sex! Politics! Dubious Footnotes!  May 9, 2007
• Digital Masonry  May 2, 2007
• Critical Mass  April 25, 2007
• The Eternal Sophomore  April 18, 2007
• A Dish Best Served Cold  April 11, 2007
• Hard Wordes in Plaine English  April 4, 2007
• Indies Under Fire  March 28, 2007
• Party in the Streets  March 21, 2007
• Remember Baudrillard  March 14, 2007
• From Grub Street to the Ivory Tower (and Back)  March 7, 2007
• Motivation and Its Discontents  Feb. 28, 2007
• The Invisible Woman  Feb. 21, 2007
• Eros Unbound  Feb. 14, 2007
• Legitimation Crisis  Feb. 7, 2007
• Critical Condition  Jan. 31, 2007
• Facing the Question  Jan. 25, 2007
• Chaos Theory  Jan. 17, 2007
• The Great Man Theory  Jan. 10, 2007
• Against Phalloblogocentrism  Jan. 3, 2007
• Criticism, Character and Tenure  Dec. 27, 2006
• The Philadelphia Story  Dec. 20, 2006
• What Said Said  Dec. 13, 2006
• Beyond the Context of No Context  Dec. 6, 2006
• Quote Unquote  Nov. 29, 2006
• Where’s Herman?  Nov. 22, 2006
• You Hide, They Seek  Nov. 15, 2006
• The High and the Low  Nov. 1, 2006
• Not Just For Java  Oct. 25, 2006
• Defiance!  Oct. 18, 2006
• Like a Rock  Oct. 11, 2006
• War Thoughts at Home  Oct. 4, 2006
• A Liberal Dose of Reason  Sept. 27, 2006
• Liberty, Equality ... Diversity?  Sept. 20, 2006
• State of the Annotation  Sept. 13, 2006
• All Plots Move Deathward  Sept. 6, 2006
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly  Aug. 30, 2006
• The Global Exception  Aug. 23, 2006
• Divided Mind  Aug. 9, 2006
• The Power of Postpositive Thinking  Aug. 2, 2006
• A Moralist of the Mind  July 19, 2006
• Aggregate This!  July 12, 2006
• Public Access  July 5, 2006
• Grab Bag  June 28, 2006
• Pressing On  June 21, 2006
• A Wiki Situation  June 14, 2006
• The Truth? You Can’t Handle the Truth!  June 7, 2006
• Hog Wild!  May 31, 2006
• Euston.... We Have a Problem  May 24, 2006
• The Kircher Code  May 17, 2006
• We, the People...  May 10, 2006
• Wheat and Chaff  May 3, 2006
• A Day in the Life  April 26, 2006
• A Slice of Cheesecake  April 19, 2006
• The Silencer  April 12, 2006
• Lazy Me  April 5, 2006
• Oh, Good Lord...  March 29, 2006
• Legal Jams  March 22, 2006
• Paradise Lost?  March 15, 2006
• The New Math  March 8, 2006
• Doing the Lord’s Work  March 1, 2006
• D’Ho!  Feb. 22, 2006
• The Heart Has Its Reasons  Feb. 15, 2006
• Professional Correctness  Feb. 8, 2006
• Dysfunction Junction, What’s Your Function?  Feb. 1, 2006
• Stolen Words  Jan. 25, 2006
• Notes from the Underground  Jan. 18, 2006
• Beyond Consolation  Jan. 11, 2006
• Literature to Infinity  Jan. 4, 2006
• Aiming the Can(n)on  Dec. 21, 2005
• The Formless Form  Dec. 14, 2005
• Thinking at the Limits  Dec. 7, 2005
• A Killing Concept  Dec. 1, 2005
• Piled Higher and Deeper  Nov. 29, 2005
• From the Workshop  Nov. 22, 2005
• Meet the Press  Nov. 17, 2005
• Radio Free Moby  Nov. 15, 2005
• Democracy at Risk  Nov. 10, 2005
• Whereabouts Not Known  Nov. 8, 2005
• Campus Sexpot  Nov. 3, 2005
• Dialectics of Disaster  Nov. 1, 2005
• A Child’s Garden of Culture and Atrocity  Oct. 27, 2005
• Festivus Cerebration  Oct. 25, 2005
• Law and Ordure  Oct. 20, 2005
• Noise in the Stacks  Oct. 18, 2005
• The Chosen Few  Oct. 13, 2005
• Hitler — the Classic?  Oct. 6, 2005
• Quarterly Report  Oct. 4, 2005
• A Dogged Pursuit  Sept. 29, 2005
• Inquiring Minds Want to Know  Sept. 27, 2005
• Things Done in Secret  Sept. 22, 2005
• Class Dismissed  Sept. 20, 2005
• Necessary Evils  Sept. 15, 2005
• The Žižek Effect  Sept. 13, 2005
• White-Collar Hell  Sept. 8, 2005
• After the Deluge  Sept. 6, 2005
• All Booked Up  Sept. 1, 2005
• Will to Power  Aug. 18, 2005
• Reading Left to Right  Aug. 16, 2005
• The Awkward Age  Aug. 4, 2005
• Other Casualties  Aug. 2, 2005
• Violence and the Sacred  July 28, 2005
• Inner Checks and Political Balances  July 26, 2005
• Gone Fishing  July 21, 2005
• Op. Cit. Etc.  July 19, 2005
• A Classic Revisited  July 14, 2005
• Real Knowledge  July 12, 2005
• Throat Culture  July 7, 2005
• Pass It On  June 30, 2005
• I, Meme, Mine  June 28, 2005
• Locating Bourdieu  June 23, 2005
• Ambiguous Legacy  June 21, 2005
• Not So Wilde  June 16, 2005
• Mind on Fire  June 14, 2005
• Silence in the Stacks  June 9, 2005
• Of Metaphors and Moving Vans  June 2, 2005
• Show Clio the Money!  May 31, 2005
• Listening to the Witness  May 26, 2005
• Remembering Ricoeur  May 24, 2005
• The Consecrated Heretic  May 12, 2005
• Information, Please  May 10, 2005
• Isn’t It Ironic?  May 5, 2005
• Impure Literature  April 28, 2005
• The Plug-In Drug  April 26, 2005
• Strangely Enough  April 21, 2005
• Write On  April 19, 2005
• Living on the Edge  April 14, 2005
• Read This!  April 11, 2005
• Bellow’s Gift  April 7, 2005
• Of Blogs and Dialogues  April 5, 2005
• Travels in Weblogestan  March 29, 2005
• Falling Into the Generation Gap  March 24, 2005
• The Inconsistent Luddite  March 22, 2005
• Under the Influence  March 17, 2005
• Sex and the Single Genius  March 15, 2005
• Keeping It Real  March 10, 2005
• The Lecturer’s Tale  March 8, 2005
• This, That and the Other Thing  March 3, 2005
• In Black and White  March 1, 2005
• Derrida’s Wake  Feb. 24, 2005
• Defending Derrida  Feb. 22, 2005
• Academic Freedom, Then and Now  Feb. 17, 2005
• A Critique of Pure BS  Feb. 15, 2005
• Among the Randroids  Feb. 10, 2005
• Narcissus With an iPod  Feb. 8, 2005
• Cafeteria Style  Feb. 3, 2005
• Free Refills  Feb. 1, 2005