I'd like to teach a course called "Scary Books," in which we read the National Conservative Weekly's ten "Most Harmful Books." We could talk about the rhetorical work of such lists: what do people who censor or censure books hope to accomplish? What does it accomplish? Why might each of these books have been deemed dangerous? Why might it be important to read "dangerous" books in a democracy? Rhetorically-significant questions, in other words.
(Thanks to Mike for the link.)
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3 comments:
oh...All I can do is laugh.
We've just finished chortling our way through the list; thanks for the link! The Fanon choice is interesting, isn't it? The judges for this little contest were willing to take on feminists, but by and large they stayed away from the critical race theorists.
Yeah, Fanon and the otherwise relative absence of stuff on race was interesting: I think conservatives have a gut awareness of the GOP's problems with race, and so they're deservedly skittish around the topic. The concerns that even leftists have acknowledged about Fanon's perspective on violence, I suspect, make him safe for conservatives to bash.
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