Relativism apart, I do not doubt that one can point to processes like the six developments described by Van Dijk and Vaessens. However, I am not convinced by their overall interpretation of the situation as testifying to the emergence of a new kind of postmodernism, ‘Late Postmodern Literature’, or by their assurance that ‘it is precisely notions of the postmodern which have shaped both literature and commentary after the “death” or end of postmodernism’.

Last week I emailed Laurie Penny’s article “Steubenville: This is rape culture’s Abu Ghraib moment” to my mother. We talked about it. She called it “sexual fascism.” She always has the right words. I asked her how it is possible to raise human beings who are capable of things like this. I use the word “human” loosely here. Human, first and foremost, may not even be the point, as evidenced by the media’s and the public’s response to the rape.

In what Alain Badiou calls his “hyper-translation” of Plato’s Republic, we are taken into the world of Plato’s classic dialogue on politics and justice, sped up to the pace of a 21st century New York street corner. Socrates and his sophist interlocutors speak a gritty street talk that is both accessible and familiar, despite the fact they invoke intellectual figures from St. Paul to Jacques Lacan to the mathematician Paul Cohen.

Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means “hobby horse”. In German it means “good-bye”, “Get off my back”, “Be seeing you sometime”. In Romanian: “Yes, indeed, you are right, that’s it. But of course, yes, definitely, right”. And so forth.

As if the name alone weren’t troubling enough, the fact that No New York is, was and forever shall be a compilation proves equally as troublous. More so than anyone else, it was Brian Eno who committed these four bands to wax. So, yet again, an essay explicitly devoted to what’s essentially his mix tape might be a goof from the get-go.

What is prayer? When I was a kid, I learned the Catholic prayers, and believed Sister Mary Annette, who liked to quote Shakespeare, when she said, “Words without thought never to heaven go.” King Claudius is trying to pray, looks like he is praying, to Hamlet, anyway, and so Hamlet decides to put off killing him, for fear that if the king is killed while praying, he’ll go to heaven, while Hamlet wants full revenge, not to send his uncle to an unjust reward.

I was born in central London two years after the Second World War. My parents were first-generation British Jews, brought up in London’s East End by their immigrant parents who had escaped from the Eastern European pogroms in the early years of the twentieth century. Since my birth in 1947, no one has ever said to me ‘You would all be dead. Your mother, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.’

With the death of Hugo Chávez last week, the battle for the interpretation of his legacy has begun. On the one hand, his followers will spare no effort in depicting him not only as a saviour of the nation, but also as a role model for the left in Latin America and elsewhere. On the other, his detractors will portray him as an authoritarian leader, who was able to win elections thanks to the development of extensive networks of clientelism and the closure of independent media.