There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the […]
Category Archives: Musings On Confusions
Seeing Beauty Or Seeing Repression – Is It A Question Of Perspective?
Federical Valabrega’s photo essay on the lives of Orthodox Jewish women in Brooklyn, New York that appeared on Time Lightbox reminded me of something I had read in Carol A. Brekenridge and Peter van der Veer’s excellent book Orientalism And The Post Colonial Predicament.
Our Protection Of Frivolous Speech And Our Prosecution Of Political Speech
Our silence is hypocritical – we conflate bigotry with ‘free speech’ and celebrate ourselves, while refusing to fight the more uncomfortable, difficult and problematic acts of ‘free speech’ itself as in this case of the young British citizen. Free speech laws and rights are most in need of defense when speech is problematic and disturbing, […]
Uncomfortable Realities, Disappointing Complexities And The Comforts Of Suburban Bourgeois Therapy
But geopolitical reality was much messier than he’d assumed. It ignited a bleak cynicism in his worldview…In addition to learning about the difficult prospects for weak, independent states, he also discovered how such countries are populated: It often included ethnic cleansing and forced deportations…While Mr. Mahon is glad to be getting his work recognized, which […]
Rethinking Africa Or How Not To Talk About Your Africa Photo Project
The American photographer Pete Muller’s is working on a long-term project called Rethinking The Enemy: Men, Masculinity And Violence, that he claims attempts to: …understand the causes of male-perpetrated violence,” He explains that he is: …working around the hypothesis that when men are not able to achieve what are often rigid standards of what makes successful manhood, […]
My Love For You Will Last…For As Long As You Are of Value
Neoliberalist subjectivity, then, is about bringing a mentality of “winning” to every aspect of life — every little thing is a performance, a contest — while being forever discontented with the fruits of such success. The winning and losing is mediated by metrics, which induce one to assent to more invasive surveillance. The surveillance merely […]
Can non-Europeans think, and if so, can the non-European be allowed to speak?
Hamid Dabashi makes an argument that should have been made much earlier. So indeed, why are all the incredible voices emerging from South Asia, China, Africa and elsewhere always and consistently missing from any discussion about philosophy and society? Can non-Europeans think? – Opinion – Al Jazeera English. As Dabashi argues: Why is European philosophy “philosophy”, […]