Doctor Faustus

  Transgender History by Susan Stryker (Note: I use the term "trans people" for trans people in general, though noteworthy to mention, this post mostly discussed trans women, and "transsexual" to describe specifically the group historically described as such, that pursued medical intervention of hormone therapy and surgeries in an attempt to fully transition to the other gender) I found myself very much enjoying this short history. And also found, to my (it seems vain) surprise how little sophistication my previous knowledge about the history of trans people and LGBT people in general involved. I must note that this book perhaps should be better termed "American Transgender History" since it focuses on the United States almost exclusively (except a short section in the beginning about Magnus Hirschfeld and the Institut fuer Sexualwissenschaft , even this is later "revealed" to be included because of the impact it had on Harry Benjamin , an acqua

  Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson In this book there is an attempt, one that I'd characterize as McLuhanist , to bring into intelligibility how material conditions brought about the consciousness of nationalism - inventing a form of membership that until recently did not exist and also made no sense. The root Anderson locates as, in his opinion, that most substantial is the advent of print. He observes the consequences of print and how it yielded a national consciousness. First he starts, in indeed a manner that I wouldn't be surprised to find written by McLuhan - by expressing a different attitude towards simultaneity that developed due to print culture. The mass produced books and newspapers allowed for a new consciousness in which many people, most of whom one isn't familiar with, all participate in reading the very same words, and in the exact same fashion as countless nameless others. This, Anderson believe

The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness  by R. D. Laing This work represents a criticism of psychiatry. It fundamentally questions some basic premises that psychiatry has about itself and its role, as well as the "mentally disordered". Laing starts the book first by examining different angles by which one can view a human being - a human being can be a person, and a human being can be an organism. Therefore - when a human being speaks, you can either look at the content of what they express, or you may look at it as a mechanical/biological process that manifests. According to Laing, one fundamental problem in psychiatry is that it's devoted to the latter (as a biological organism) even though the discipline itself is a study and therapy relating to personhood, something that on the surface at least does appear rather absurd. In this work he brings the example of " hebephrenic " and " catatonic " individuals to make his point - whic