Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes wears and displays its existentialist, absurdist aspirations openly and transparently; this is its terse Wikipedia summation: In 1955, Jumpei Niki, a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led, by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a houseContinue reading “Kōbō Abe’s ‘Woman in The Dunes’ And The Scientist’s Existentialist Despair”
Category Archives: History
On Voting ‘Yes’ On The CUNY Strike Authorization Vote
Yesterday, like many of my colleagues at the City University of New York I voted ‘Yes’ on our union’s strike authorization vote. (The voting period ends May 11th; at that time, the PSC-CUNY will be able to inform CUNY administration of the extent of faculty and staff support for a strike.) A strike is seriousContinue reading “On Voting ‘Yes’ On The CUNY Strike Authorization Vote”
Derrida And Beauvoir On The ‘Powerless,’ ‘Not Bothersome’ Intellectual
In ‘The Ends of Man,’ (from After Philosophy: End or Transformation?, eds. Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, MIT Press, 1987, pp. 129), Jacques Derrida writes: It would be illusory to believe that political innocence has been restored and evil complicities undone when opposition to them can be expressed in the country itself, notContinue reading “Derrida And Beauvoir On The ‘Powerless,’ ‘Not Bothersome’ Intellectual”
GK Chesterton On Conservatism’s Necessary Changes
In Orthodoxy (Image Books, 1959) G. K. Chesterton writes: Conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of changes. If you leave a white post alone it will soon beContinue reading “GK Chesterton On Conservatism’s Necessary Changes”
An Unsettling Vision Of An Ugly Word
I’ve been reading Garry Wills‘ Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1994; a light and entertaining read this election season) over the past couple of days–on the subway, naturally. On Monday night, as I rode back to Brooklyn from Manhattan to pick up my daughter on daycare, I came toContinue reading “An Unsettling Vision Of An Ugly Word”
Hillary Clinton On The Reagans’ AIDS Legacy: Anatomy Of A ‘Triangulation’
Here is my take on what went wrong with Hillary Clinton’s ‘the Reagans started a national conversation about AIDS‘ statement (for which, after a ginormous shitstorm on social media had broken out, she apologized.) In preparation for her remarks, Clinton must have been briefed–by not very competent people–that Nancy Reagan‘s funeral was a good opportunityContinue reading “Hillary Clinton On The Reagans’ AIDS Legacy: Anatomy Of A ‘Triangulation’”
Gramsci And Nietzsche As Philosophers Of Culture
In ‘Socialism and Culture’ (reprinted in The Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916-1935, David Forgacs ed., New York University Press, 2000) Antonio Gramsci writes: We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopaedic knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts,Continue reading “Gramsci And Nietzsche As Philosophers Of Culture”
The Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation, And The Slow ‘Disintegration’
In his revisionist history of the Reconstruction A Short History of Reconstruction (Harper and Row, New York, 1990, pp.2) Eric Foner writes: [T]the [Emancipation] Proclamation only confirmed what was happening on farms and plantations throughout the South. War, it has been said, is the midwife of revolution, and well before 1863 the disintegration of slavery hadContinue reading “The Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation, And The Slow ‘Disintegration’”
From Austerlitz To Auschwitz
I’ve only recently read Elie Wiesel‘s Night (last week, in fact), and as is my habit, I skipped the preface (by Robert McAfee Brown) and the foreword (by François Mauriac) and went straight to the text. Once I was done, I returned to these preliminary sections. In the foreword, I read Mauriac describe his encounter with a youngContinue reading “From Austerlitz To Auschwitz”
Hillary Clinton And The Supposed Political Windfall For Feminism
The ‘feminist legacy’ of Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi is an ambiguous one. These women, in varying fashion, rose to great political power, and exerted it with varying degrees of aplomb. (They both earned nicknames that assimilated their visible displays of ‘steel’ into a stereotypical vision of male toughness.) Gandhi came to power in aContinue reading “Hillary Clinton And The Supposed Political Windfall For Feminism”
Samir Chopra 