The term ‘postmodernism’ may no longer seem to tell us much about the present.
Read MoreLanguage bends and buckles under pressure of climate change. Take the adjective ‘glacial’. I recently came across an old draft of my PhD dissertation on which my advisor had scrawled the rebuke: ‘You’re proceeding at a glacial pace. You’re skating on thin ice.’
Read MoreSurveillance capitalism – with smartphones, laptops, and the increasing numbers of ‘internet of things’ devices making up its physical infrastructure, watching and tracking everything we do…
Read MoreDeadpan, unhurried, and sensitive, Aki Kaurismäki’s 2017 film The Other Side of Hope tells the story of a young Syrian immigrant, Khaled.
Read MoreSay, for instance, that you believe you have a pain in your back or that there is a computer screen in front of you. What are the justifications for these beliefs?
Read MoreAs any good high school student should know, the beaks of Galápagos “finches” (in fact the islands’ mockingbirds) helped Darwin to develop his ideas about evolution.
Read MoreAhead of Italy’s national elections on 4 March, towns and cities across the country were plastered with posters to “defend the traditional family”
Read MoreI am team-teaching a course on the later Wittgenstein this semester with a somewhat skeptical but radically open-minded philosopher.
Read MoreYour phone ‘knows’ whom you speak to, when you speak to them, what you said, where you have been, your purchases, photos, biometric data, even your notes to yourself – and all this dating back years…
Read More“Getting lost” in a work of fiction is a conventional expression that speaks to the immersive power of narrative…
Read MoreMarxists in the United States and Europe often claim it is easier for people to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Read MoreIt is often observed that the French Revolution was a revolution of scientists. Nourished by airy abstractions and heartfelt cries to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, its leaders sought a society grounded, not in God or tradition.
Read MoreOne of the most peculiar qualities of Greta Gerwig’s much-acclaimed film Lady Bird is that—especially for a coming-of-age story, or domestic drama, or whatever you call it…
Read MoreThe clever adage that “anyone who claims to remember the 1960s wasn’t really there” is amusing only because so many people associate the Age of Aquarius with a drug-induced haze.
Read MoreReaders with a historical knowledge of 1980s punk will have little difficulty seeing the value of Dave Dictor’s memoir, MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption
Read MoreIt was by happy coincidence that my review copy of David S. Roh’s Illegal Literature arrived in my mailbox the day I started sending out permission requests for reuse of material for a forthcoming manuscript.
Read MoreAlbert Einstein said that the ‘most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible’. He was right to be astonished.
Read MoreLife isn’t easy for representatives of Russia’s LGBT community who don’t hide their sexual orientation. A 2013 law on “gay propaganda” has, in effect, legalised LGBT discrimination.
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