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”
Tag Archives: Beethoven
Concert at the Corner
The boy with the violin case came around the corner. On time, as always. Head bowed, feet dragging on the sidewalk, the case drooping by his side, as always. He approached A__’s gang, scattered on the sidewalk, oblivious to their presence. Till A__ spoke. ‘Hey!’ The boy looked up, alarm running through his body quicklyContinue reading “Concert at the Corner”
Birthdays, Coincidences, and Divination
I was born on the 156th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s expulsion–on grounds of atheism–from Oxford. (Thomas Jefferson Hogg, his collaborator on The Necessity of Atheism, was expelled with him; the two were accused of ‘contumacy in refusing certain answers put to them’ by the master and fellows of University College.) My birthday is also, remarkably enough:Continue reading “Birthdays, Coincidences, and Divination”
Samir Chopra 