Suppose you say, “I’m <angry, sad, disappointed, anxious, irate,….> because of X <my neighbor’s behavior, my father’s letter, my mother’s language to me last night, my husband’s antics….>.” As an example, “I’m sad because my brother ignored my birthday this year.” Now, suppose your respondent immediately launches into an ‘explanation’ of, or ‘apologia’ for, X:Continue reading “Acknowledging Reported Emotions Before ‘Explaining’ Them”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
Childhood Crushes – I: Nafisa Ali In ‘Junoon’
I was eleven years old when I saw Nafisa Ali, then all of eighteen years old, play the part of Ruth Labadoor in Shyam Benegal‘s 1978 art-house classic Junoon–Ruth is a young Englishwoman, living on an English military cantonment in colonial India with her family. As the Indian Mutiny of 1857 breaks out, Ruth’s familyContinue reading “Childhood Crushes – I: Nafisa Ali In ‘Junoon’”
Lionel Trilling As Philosopher Of Culture
In Freud and The Crisis of our Culture, Lionel Trilling writes: The idea of culture, in the modern sense of the word, is a relatively new idea. It represents a way of thinking about our life in society which developed concomitantly with certain ways of conceiving the self. Indeed, our modern idea of culture may beContinue reading “Lionel Trilling As Philosopher Of Culture”
The Trump-Republican Legacy: Institutional Capture And Degradation
There might be some disputation over whether the Donald Trump-Republican Party unholy alliance is politically effective in terms of the consolidation of executive power or actual legislative activity–seasoned political observers consider the Trump administration to have been an utter failure on both fronts–but there can be little doubt about the extent of the damage theContinue reading “The Trump-Republican Legacy: Institutional Capture And Degradation”
The Indifferent ‘Pain Of The World’
In All the Pretty Horses (Vintage International, New York, 1993, pp. 256-257), Cormac McCarthy writes: He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had notContinue reading “The Indifferent ‘Pain Of The World’”
On Being In A Quandary On Quandary Peak
On July 19th, my wife, my daughter (aged four and a half years), and I set off to hike Quandary Peak in Colorado–one of the state’s fifty-three fourteeners. We awoke at four a.m., left at five a.m. and after a longer-than-expected drive, were on the trail at 7:50AM. By Colorado standards this was a tad bitContinue reading “On Being In A Quandary On Quandary Peak”
The Republicans Will Ride Out This Latest ‘He Can’t Survive This’ Moment
As usual, anxious liberals and American citizens all over the nation are waiting, with bated breath and a dollop of some old-fashioned American optimism, for the Great Abandonment: that crystalline moment when the Republican Party will decide that enough is enough, issue a condemnation–with teeth–of Donald Trump, begin scurrying away from his sinking ship, andContinue reading “The Republicans Will Ride Out This Latest ‘He Can’t Survive This’ Moment”
Toppling Confederate Statues Does Not ‘Erase’ The Confederacy From ‘History’
News from Baltimore and Durham suggests a long-overdue of cleaning American towns and cities of various pieces of masonry known as ‘Confederate statues’; young folks have apparently taken it upon themselves to go ahead and tear down these statues which pay homage to those who were handed a rather spectacular defeat in the American CivilContinue reading “Toppling Confederate Statues Does Not ‘Erase’ The Confederacy From ‘History’”
Thirty Years After: Reflections On Migration
Thirty years ago on this day, I migrated to the US. At New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, I boarded a British Airlines flight to London Heathrow from where I would board a connection to New York City, and set off. My mother and my best friend dropped me off at the airport; my grandmotherContinue reading “Thirty Years After: Reflections On Migration”
Anticipating Another Encounter With Books And Students
This coming fall semester promises to be a cracker: I have the usual heavy teaching load of three classes (including two four-credit classes whose lectures will be one hundred minutes long, thus making for a very exhausting Monday-Wednesday sequence of teaching running from 9:05 AM to 3:30 PM, with an hour break between the secondContinue reading “Anticipating Another Encounter With Books And Students”
Samir Chopra 