Stephen Colbert’s super PAC “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” has spent $15,000 on ads supporting Herman Cain in South Carolina. by Kim Barker Sure, there’s the GOP symbol, but the real elephant in the room at any of the Republican debates since December has been the super PAC, the turbocharged political action committee able…
Read Morescienceforseo.com by Massimo Pigliucci A recent piece by Scott Jaschik in “Inside Higher Education” pointed out what a number of my colleagues have been thinking for a while now: the peer review system for scholarly journals doesn’t work very well, needs to be reformed, and really ought to take radical advantage of new technologies. There…
Read Moreby T. S. Eliot S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against…
Read Moreby Susan James In which it is claimed that the practice of drawing can lead two thinkers centuries apart into a new symbiosis opening the way to political transformation. But what kind of transformation? Bento’s Sketchbook, by John Berger, Verso, 2011. 167pp. From A to X. A Story in Letters, by John Berger, Verso, 197pp.…
Read MoreFigure 1: All art unless otherwise indicated by Rex Veeder by Rex Veeder Introduction Marshall McLuhan deserves to be re-evaluated as a rhetorician because he has described and demonstrated a perspective on rhetoric that remains significant. That perspective involves aesthetic, social, and cultural elements that gravitate around a mythos of (w)holistic understanding: an auditory experience,…
Read MoreMelvin B. Tolson by Harris Feinsod Whenever a new anthology of modern U.S. poetry comes along, it seems that some distinguished critic or other is fated to take up arms, defending his or her vision of canonical distinction against the treachery of “inclusiveness.” The latest eminence to cast herself as such a centurion is Helen…
Read MoreWhen people ask why I would choose to write a book about poisons I usually start with my brief stint as a chemistry major…
Read Moreby Elena Strelnikova It’s an age-old adage that things always look greener on the other side of the fence and this is particularly true of married women looking at single women’s life and vice versa. My colleague and I have taken up sport. We go swimming and we run in the gym. My husband has…
Read Moreby Gerard Bertrand Marcel Proust and Kafka, the meeting Marcel Proust, 44 rue Hamelin Marcel Proust in Normandy Marcel Proust in Venice Proust at war Marcel Proust and the Young Girls Marcel Proust at The Pré-Catelan Marcel Proust at the Ritz Marcel Proust in Combray At…
Read Moreby Ruth Kaplan My Shakespeare class finally persuaded me to take a class trip to go see the new Roland Emmerich movie, Anonymous. I went forewarned. Multiple reviewers have pointed out problems with the film, which proposes that the Earl of Oxford wrote the literature by William Shakespeare. (For starters, see Stephen Marche and James…
Read MoreDjerba, photograph by Judah Passow, 1986 by Nomi Stone On an island off the coast of Tunisia, on the periphery of the Jewish village of the Hara Kebira, three Jewish teenage girls in bathrobes and slippers pass through a gauzy curtain to visit Nisreen, a, the Muslim hairdresser. The girls treat the space almost like…
Read MoreWhite Cube, Patrick Ireland, 1998 by Tim Gilman and Františka Sevcik …intervals of destructuring paradoxically carry the momentum for the ongoing process by which thought and perception are brought into relation toward transformative action. —Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation [1] Facing a blank canvas or blank page is a moment of pure potential,…
Read MoreThe Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David, 1787 by Paul Kahn We do not ordinarily associate political theology or Carl Schmitt with freedom. Indeed, we are more likely to think that liberal political theory focuses on freedom, while political theology focuses on the authority of sectarian beliefs. Neither of these alternatives, however, makes much contact with…
Read MoreTranslated by Meredith Ramirez Talusan Good day my love, my dear, my other half I hope our children get good grades and laugh. My Junior’s still the king of basketball? And Anna? She must be the queen of all, the one admired at Flower Festival. And how is Sir Serapio, poor old pal? He bought…
Read MoreVladimir Putin believes he will be able to hold on to his power and avoid a repeat of Brezhnevite political and social stagnation. His critics are afraid that the future consequences of such a belief will be dramatic (photo: premier.gov.ru) by Daniil Kotsyubinsky The catcalls that greeted Vladimir Putin when he appeared at a sports…
Read Moreit.toonpool.com by Massimo Pigliucci Recently, I have hosted a roundtable discussion on the science and philosophy of free will (full video here), where the panelists were Hakwan Lau from Columbia University, Alfred Mele from Florida State University, Jesse Prinz, a colleague of mine at the City University of New York, and Adina Roskies from Dartmouth…
Read MoreArtwork by David O’Keefe, via by Christopher Warley Can the upper class speak? There are signs that it cannot. Maybe this sounds silly, but if you are still in the market for a future for literary criticism, the accurate description of what the upper-class sounds and looks like might be a good place to start.…
Read MoreBarbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity, Paramount Pictures, 1944 by Paula Quigley Depending on your position, the phrase ‘film theory’ can refer either to a critical rigour informed by mainly European intellectual currents, or a ponderous and parasitic dependence on certain schools of thought, particularly psychoanalysis. The 50th anniversary edition of Screen –…
Read MorePoster by Charles Sharland, 1913 by James Warner In The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst explored the iconoclasm of the Thatcher years. But in The Stranger’s Child, he seems to portray England as a country self-defeatingly focused on its past. For some generations now, novels largely set in large English houses have tended to strike…
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