Archive for June, 2009

June 30, 2009 2

The Culinary Model of Education

By Robert Minto in Criticism, Education, Scholarship

“Too many [...] colleges are places for lectures, rote learning, memorizing, regurgitation; St. Stephen’s encouraged random reading, individual note-taking, personal tutorials, extracurricular development. Elsewhere you learned to answer the questions; at college, you learned to questions the answers. Some of us went further and questioned the questions.” — Shashi Tharoor
I am tempted to claim that [...]

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June 29, 2009 0

The Gatekeeper as Anti-autobiography

By Robert Minto in Books, Criticism, Man, Politics, Rhetoric

In his book The Gatekeeper, in the midst of a discussion of “anti-philosophers,” Terry Eagleton throws out the following sentence.
… anti-autobiography means not just not writing your autobiography, an astonishly prevalent practice, but writing it in such a way as to outwit the prurience and immodesty of the genre by frustrating your own desire for [...]

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June 28, 2009 0

In Defense of Self-plagiarism

By Robert Minto in Rhetoric, Scholarship, Thinking

I’ve been enjoying a brief Terry Eagleton kick this last week. My first exposure to the fellow.
First, I read Literary Theory: An Introduction: beautifully written, polemically brilliant, wonderfully informative. Then I worked through Walter Benjamin: Toward a Revolutionary Criticism: somewhat hampered by the jargon, but evincing great insight and interesting lines of thought especially in [...]

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June 26, 2009 0

Against the Monologic Cast of Theory

By Robert Minto in Politics, Rhetoric, Scholarship

“… ‘theory’ now had its specialist protocols remote from the market-place and public forum, untainted by truck with the masses [...] that had rejected the ‘dialogism’ of ancient rhetoric for a resolutely monologic cast. Reasoning, Ong remarks, wanted to dispense with words, since ‘these annoyingly hint that in some mysterious way thinking itself is always [...]

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June 17, 2009 0

Blood: The Narrative for a Service in Three Parts

By Robert Minto in Gospel, Mystery

This has actually been posted before on an old blog. Possibly the only thing from that venture worth salvaging. The following three narratives were used to hold together a Good Friday service at Dordt College, which I planned and conducted with the rest of the chapel committee.
I.
Blood.
Scripture is soaked in one of the most lurid [...]

June 15, 2009 2

A Prose Poem for Arizona

By Robert Minto in Places

For my fellow Arizonans.
I have tried many times to capture my backyard with my camera. But I can’t. I can’t capture the liberating sweep of weedy flatland that extends beyond my iron fence to a brown border of identical houses clustered like children in the shadow of purple-grey mountains. I can’t capture the stillness of [...]

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June 15, 2009 1

Thoughts About the Future of the CPJ

By Robert Minto in Patriotism, Politics

These fragmentary thoughts were inspired by the admirably inquisitive preparations for leadership of Gideon Strauss, (soon-to-be) new President of the Center for Public Justice, at his blog. I find the potential of CPJ to be massive for my own restless and eager (but aimless) generation. Forgive the imperative tone of my suggestions—they were written quickly [...]

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June 13, 2009 1

Transcription vs. Translation: Writing about Ideas

By Robert Minto in Rhetoric

The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style. — Walter Benjamin

Transcription is a major impediment to most of us ever becoming great writers. The creative freedom of a day-dreamer is denied anyone who would codify the dream: not only mechanical difficulties, slow pens or typing skills, but the barrier of language [...]

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June 10, 2009 0

Repentance & Hope: The Significance of Mankind

By Robert Minto in Eschatology, Hope, Man, Repentance

A great agony of Christian thinking has been the ambiguity of the question how much importance should we assign to mankind, its destiny, and its works? A thousand small incarnations of this ambiguity have embroiled our thinkers in skirmishes with each other. I’d like to commentate on the possibilities for repentance and hope within this [...]

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June 1, 2009 0

The Eschatological Themes of Up!

By Robert Minto in Community, Eschatology, Film

When on Saturday I found myself ensconced between two rows of bawling children to watch the newest Pixar animation, a small moleskin open on my knee for notes, and a delicious tingle of anticipation all out of proportion to my age causing me to shift my weight back and forth, I suddenly wondered if there [...]

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