RAW: new article for Disinfo
22 March 2016 – I’ve written an article for disinfo.com about the resurgence of interest in Robert Anton Wilson’s ideas. As well as looking at a couple of new RAW-related books, it continues the theme I’ve already written (briefly) about – on the harmoniousness between RAW’s mutiple-model neurosemantics and Lakoff’s Frame Semantics.
I shortened it from my original 2,000 words to 1,200 (which is Disinfo’s preferred maximum article length), but I’m pleased with the result, and think you’ll enjoy it. (The accompanying photo is of my Robert Anton Wilson “stash”). Here is the article:
http://disinfo.com/2016/03/raw-resurgence/ (Link is now dead – see below*)
*Web Archive copy of above disinfo.com page here.
*UPDATE (Aug 2019): Disinfo.com seems to have closed down, so the original link above is now dead. There’s a longer version of the article here.
N E W S • F R A M E S • • • • • 
Shared here where it was well received.
Robert Anton Wilson Fans
https://www.facebook.com/groups/266989076737353
Richard Alexander
March 22, 2016 at 7:46 pm
Thanks for that, Richard – much appreciated. And good to see the Robert Anton Wilson Fans group is still going strong – I used to read it when it was first set up, but I’ve never really got the hang of Facebook (my loss, I know – but I can never find things on Facebook. My blog stats have always showed plenty of hits coming from Facebook pages, and the new Disinfo piece had around 180 Facebook shares after a day or so, but it seems impossible to find where the hits come from on Facebook, unlike with “normal” web pages).
NewsFrames
March 23, 2016 at 8:23 am
That is a very tasty piece indeed – thank you! Perhaps at some point you can put the 2,000 word extended version on your blog?
Andre SC (@Andre_Serov)
March 23, 2016 at 10:45 am
Intriguing perspective on Lakoff and Wilson. I’d be interested to hear more on this topic.
Kate Gilfillan
March 24, 2016 at 11:31 am
Kate – yes, there’s much more to it. I’ve only scratched the surface in what I’ve written up to now. It seems a very useful way of approaching aspects of the work of both RAW & George Lakoff. With RAW, it’s looking at a side of his writing that often seems overlooked, despite the importance that RAW himself placed on it. With GL, it’s a way of looking at the aspect of his work that’s not so well understood, but which underlies everything he’s written about “frames”.
I see a lot of nonsense written about GL, btw. Some people take a dislike to something political he’s written; others take a dislike to the (inaccurate) notion of “fixing” political strategy with clever words and slogans. And, of course, neither of these end up having a clue what his cognitive linguistics work (eg on conceptual metaphor) is really about. They’ve probably glanced through ‘Don’t Think of An Elephant’ or ‘Moral Politics’, but they’ve never looked at ‘Metaphors We Live By’ or ‘Philosophy in The Flesh’.
While I’m commenting, I’ll also mention http://www.rawillumination.net, which is an informative blog that I sometimes look at to catch up on RAW-related developments. I’ve just seen a post on it that comments about my Disinfo piece. The first para lists several RAW-related projects which my published piece didn’t include – almost as if it’s my failing for not including them. But the purpose of my article wasn’t to provide some sort of listing of all this material – it made a completely different set of points (incidentally, I could fill the whole article with such a listing, but it would be an entirely different kind of text).
Great to see some of the appreciative comments and shares on Facebook, etc – the ones I can access, at least. Looking at some of the Facebook “shares”, I spotted Kenn Thomas from Steamshovel Press, who used to feature Robert Anton Wilson in some of his magazines – always a good read.
NewsFrames
March 24, 2016 at 12:59 pm