What? I’m pretty sure this has been common knowledge for a very long time.
I’m speaking loosely. There is Heidegger the person and Heidegger the work.
Heidegger the person has always (since about 1935) been pretty sus for supporting Nazi Germany before and during the war. Before 2014, the general opinion was that he was a prick for sure, maybe a Nazi, but maybe also just a guy saying the “right” things to stay alive during the war.
Starting in 2014, his Black Notebooks were published. These were large collections of his personal correspondence that showed he wasn’t just a coward trying to survive the war, but instead he believed in Nazism. So Heidegger the person is now widely known to be a Nazi, but most people said this is like Aristotle or Frege: bad people who are doing good work that is separate from their personal politics.
The review I posted above is of a book from 2022, and it makes the case, from new evidence, that Heidegger the person AND Heidegger the work are all the bad stuff. It’s antisemitism all the way down.
And the connection to Dahl is that every published version of Heidegger’s work has been heavily edited to paper over his racism. Anyone studying Heidegger outside of an archive room, has been studying the cleaned up version. His heirs and publishers did this knowingly and on purpose to cleanse Heidegger’s reputation.
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so, in some cases it’s too hard to remove all the racism and have anything of value left. sounds like just canceling it from the classrooms would be appropriate, no?
afaik it’s not on the banned book lists anywhere
it is banned in putin’s russia
Of course in some cases. Not sure about this case. I’m not qualified to say, but that’s what the current debate is about.
The clearest point is that we shouldn’t be editing and deleting sections from important texts.
so, are you in favor of leaving the racism in?
Of course. Not to be a prick, but maybe go back and read the thread for the last 48 hours if you are interested in this discussion.
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i’ve read as much as i wanted since the beginning. i am not a proponent of leaving in stuff like racism in books where it’s impossible to edit and footnote to gain some sort of value out of it. if the book becomes vacuous while doing it, stop pushingthe book. if the book is too important, figure out correct annotations. there are lots of talented editors who need employment like the rest of us.
Dahl is important texts?
I only put “important” in there as a qualifier to make the point as uncontroversial as possible. But yeah, I think anyone’s published work is an important text. Feel free to fabricate grocery lists and whatever else.
Apparently.
I hate to be that guy (lol jk i love to be that guy) but what’s an example of this?
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Who gets to decide?
We report. You decide.
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Dreadful title. Censorship wasn’t really the central issue
i was hoping for examples from the 60s and 70s, but it’s too difficult with the new controversies basically clogging the search results.
In May, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) invited feedback on a new textbook it had commissioned for a Mexican-American Studies elective offered to the state’s schools. Augustin Loredo, a social studies teacher in Pasadena, TX, downloaded the pdf from the state education web site and paged through the 500 + page document.
If formally approved, “Mexican American Heritage” by Valerie Angle and Jaime Riddle, it is safe to say, won’t be a fixture in Loredo’s classroom.
“I’m not touching it. That book will never be used with my students,” he states categorically. Loredo then catches himself and backtracks – just a little.
“No, wait. Maybe I’ll introduce it to my students as how not to teach Mexican American studies.”
Loredo, who has been teaching the subject for 11 years at South Houston High School, says the book is a travesty. He’s not alone. Educators and activists across the state have mobilized this summer to call attention to the racial stereotypes and historical inaccuracies that are littered throughout the book and demand that the SBOE reject it and start over.
For example, in a section on foreign business investment in Mexico in the late 1800s, the authors wallow in gratuitous stereotyping:
“[Industrialists] were used to their workers putting in a full day’s work, quietly and obediently, and respecting rules, authority, and property. In contrast, Mexican laborers were not reared to put in a full day’s work so vigorously. …There was a cultural attitude of ‘mañana,’ or ‘tomorrow,’ when it came to high-gear production. It was also traditional to skip work on Mondays, and drinking on the job could be a problem.”
Then there’s this passage on assimilation:
“Cubans seemed to fit into Miami well, for example, and find their niche in the business community. Mexicans, on the other hand, seemed more ambivalent about assimilating into the American system and accepting American values…The concern that many Mexican-Americans feel disconnected from American cultures and values is still present.”
The book also claims the 1960s-era Chicano Movement “adopted a revolutionary narrative that opposed Western civilization and wanted to destroy this society.”
A textbook is a lot different than a novel.
And now the hacks are coming for Ursula K LeGuin.
you are not going to believe what they did to agatha christie ten years after she passed.
How dare you suggest that an obviously racist term adopted by Brits from racist Americans is anything less than wholesome when the Brits use it to mean the same thing the racist Americans mean.
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