Russian poetry calls for humaneness, respect and love. Instead of this, Mr Putin brings war and impoverishment to the already poor people of Russia.
Read MoreMichael B. Katz sadly passed away in August. We knew him as a brilliant writer and strong champion of the urban poor. Here are some tributes from his friends.
Read MoreIn February of 1922, just after James Joyce’s Ulysses appeared, Virginia Woolf wrote to her sister Vanessa, who was then in Paris: “for Gods sake make friends with Joyce. I particularly want to know what he’s like.”
Read MoreIn the moment that an “after Occupy” finally had to be thought, a group of us formed Strike Debt, as an attempt to salvage what was left.
Read MoreWhile local journalists were once again busy regurgitating worn-down, coma inducing positions about yet another spectral appearance of Enver Hoxha at the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Tirana, very few cared to analyze the rather remarkable speech of PM Edi Rama at the 6th Annual Creative Time Summit on November 15 in Stockholm.
Read MoreThis spring, I spent some time watching these films from Kabul in a small room deep in the depths of the ICRC building, a room located inside a network of corridors and sliding doors. It was a silent, small room, a room with space for the past, filled up with the tools of bearing witness, from U-Matic to Beta players.
Read MoreI write in my rental apartment on Rue de Seine in Paris, while trying to simultaneously ignore the tolling of the church bells in my vicinity as well as the continuous barking of my next door neighbor, Georges. I have never seen him or his owners; however, given the permanent scolding I hear, he must do things well behaved dogs should only do outside.
Read MoreJewish-American comedy, in particular, has Eastern European and Germanic roots. It came over from Europe; and in many ways, as Jews became more and more assimilated, Jewish comedy became… American comedy. It lost a lot of its ethnic particularity and has, to a major extent, become generic. Nonetheless, Jewish-Americans still identify with humor and see Jewishness as inextricably connected to it.
Read MoreFoucault promised various books on the relation between power, subjectivity and truth in his career. In the first volume of the History of Sexuality, published in 1976, he said that it would be followed by a series of five books, of which the first was under the title La chair et le corps (The Flesh and the Body), looking at the question of confession since the late Middle Ages.
Read MoreOr: An Experiment in Behavior Modification. There is an old saying in Camden Town: If you give BERFROIS fish and chips, it’ll eat fish and chips and read the paper it came wrapped in. But if you teach BERFROIS to fish and chips, it’ll eat fish and chips and read and write a lot of…
Read MoreOn the corner of the rue de la Tombe Issoire in southern Paris, the photographer finds a map lying on the pavement, torn into three pieces. The map shows the streets of the thirteenth and fourteenth arrondissements which lie in its vicinity. Written by hand on the fragments is a series of numbers which suggest significant locations.
Read MoreYou develop habits. You learn to relish your time in the shower because it’s the only place you truly feel alone. You learn to relish therapeutic techniques like writing or reading time because those are the only times you feel truly free with your ideas.
Read MoreMartin Luther King’s not just a political martyr and the Civil Rights Movement is not just some political phenomenon. Nope. Instead: Ta-dah! [gestures broadly with arms] Martin Luther King’s the Greatest Artist of the Twentieth Century and the Civil Rights Movement is the greatest exhibition of performance art ever made.
Read MoreOn the eve of the publication of her new book, ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate,’ Klein sat down with Liam Barrington-Bush. She reminds us that in a culture that treats people as consumers and relationships as transactions, ‘we’re not who we were told we were.’
Read MoreIllustration from Venice, the city of the sea, by Joseph Pennell, 1913 by Vernon Lee To M.W., IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE LAST SONG AT PALAZZO BARBARO, Chi ha inteso, intenda. They have been congratulating me again today upon being the only composer of our days—of these days of deafening orchestral effects and poetical quackery—who has…
Read MoreRegardless of whether you are from Europe, the United States, Asia, or Africa, we can all agree that there is something special about the simpleton. In Hebrew (and Yiddish), a language I am culturally familiar with, the simpleton, otherwise known as the schlemiel, is called a “tam.” The interesting thing about the word “tam” is that it means not only “the simpleton” – it also means a “person who is complete.”
Read Moreby Hanjo Berressem In “…without shame of concern for etymology,” Hanjo Berressem discusses Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge in the context post-9/11 fiction. In contrast to narratives of posttraumatic melancholy, Berressem argues that Bleeding Edge is a “Jeremiad about the fall and the sins of America.” The result is an essay that makes a powerful case for…
Read MoreOne problem with gentrification is that it always gets worse. But then I go into a Hooters, and it’s a vintage clothing store. A friend of mine is trying on breasts. This is why I like dreaming.
Read MoreThe intellectual integrity of cultural anthropology is based largely on its commitment to cultural relativism as a principled notion. Cultural relativism is the principle from which the discipline achieves its sense of empirical objectivity. Cultural differences are cherished as just that, cultural differences.
Read MoreIt is hard not be struck by the severe parochialism, and usually the US-centrism, of the now-popular approach to human diversity that calculates a person’s ‘privilege ranking’ by considering a few supposedly basic features of identity, particularly gender, religion, sexual identity, physical ability, and ‘race’.
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