…from Desert winds I come

At the pushing of Evan Lisull over at The Desert Lamp, I’ve started my own blog. Evan and I started as opinions columnists at the Arizona Daily Wildcat. I really liked to envision my stint there as an attemped “public voice” kind of gig, and after being away for a while, I decided I wanted to start commenting on current events again. Evan took me on board the Lamp, but with he and Connor holding down the (very gracious wing of) the libertarian tent, we talked it over and decided that with my own (hopefully fair minded) leftist bent, I’d be better off with my own blog. I still think of Evan as the head honcho in a way, as he has the lead in trying to start his own incarnation of The Atlantic’s Voices. I think this is a very good idea, especially with the name I tentaively suggested for our network, “Under the Sun.” With luck we’ll really get this rolling in earnest soon. Here on Critical Political I’ll offer commentary on current events on a large scale, but also following the Lamp’s lead, issues related to the University of  Arizona. Hopefully I’ll attract some smart readers for good discussion.

A litte about myself: I’m an International Studies senior at the University of Arizona with a focus on political theory. I started off studying Latin American politics, and then halfway on a whim went to study abroad in the Czech Republic, where the democratic movements of the late 70’s through ‘89 caught my attention and have really stuck with me ever since. Regionless, then, I’m trying to understand it all in a very broad way through political science, sociology and philosophy (and recently, some anthropology). My natural instincts pull me pretty hard leftward and I’m trying to figure out specifically how it’s a good description of things, and a realistic way to go forward. The “Critical” in the blog title is meant as a nod towards the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, as that pretty well captures my general inclination  towards things. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I don’t know nearly as much as I should about their  big figures, like Marx (the inspiration), Adorno, Horkheimer or today, Habermas. In any case, this is partly because the thinker who seems to me closest to getting things right is Charles Taylor. Good ol’ Chuck T is often called a communitarian for short, but this hardly seems enough for a thinker whose major mentors run the gamut from Hegel and Marx, to Isaiah Berlin, to Catholicism, to William James, to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The major descriptor that pops up in reference to his work by other eminent thinkers is “magisterial” and that seems to me about right – with luck I’ll get there someday. The current plan after graduation is work for a year or two, then enroll in a JD/MPP program.  We’ll see.

I’ll try and get a real post up here later today. Evan wrote a good piece the other day commenting on the role of academia in the future. I want to complement his piece with my own take on why things are headed in the direction they seem to be.