Scholars Throw Down

So the irony of my current readings and eventual research is that the book that was the bane of my existence at Oregon (y'all remember it...612 fun: Islands of History) will probably be core to future work. The funny thing is tonight I've read the two follow up books to Islands and come to a couple realizations: first off, Marshall Sahlins isn't as bad as I took him for the first time around (although it still pisses me off when academics throw French into their books at those key moments when you need to understand the crux of their arguments, and not to mention that it's taken me three times in reading Islands to have a marginal sense of what the heck dude's talking about).

But that said, the other thing I've learned is that if I ever publish anything in the future and it gets bad reviews, I will always remind myself to look back at the book length attack on Sahlins by Obeyesekere and then the book length rebuttal from Sahlins. Holy crap dude, couldn't they just write two page reviews like the rest of snooty academics? Apparently not, and the result is nearly 200 pages (in each case) of intellectual sparring. Lots of cheap shots to the jugular.

Academics...freakin nutty.