I SHARE MY LECTURES IN the Masters course I’m enrolled in with architects, civil engineers, a few property developers, and one or two landscape designers. I’m one of a very small minority, I find, who’ve ever spent any time down in the humanities or social science end of a university—and it’s something of a shock to jump over into the space of the other of The Two Cultures.¹

On the other hand, it’s been fascinating listening to first year political science and late modern European history abridged so thoroughly, or “structure” and “agency” thrown out as new bits of terminology to a room used to understanding them in terms of real estate.

Talk about teaching your grandmother to separate half a dozen eggs, beating the whites with caster sugar until you get fluffy peaks, combining the yolks with boiled lemon zest, cornflour, butter and more caster sugar to make a curd, and baking the whole lot on top of sweet shortcrust pastry.

From the top, you can see only the frothy superstructure, but rest assured, the underlying nature of the dessert is based on the material citrus base. A social relationship of dialectical materialism was never so delicious.²

¹ Not you, Law. Get back in your box.

² Next week: The Frankfurt School?

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