Smith, Zadie. “Fascinated to presume: In defense of fiction.” The New York Review of Books 24 (2019). A really wonderful philosophical reflection by Zadie Smith on the reasons for writing and reading fiction and for an engagement with and inclusion of the diversity of human experience. A few extracts that I found particularly helpful. I …
A reflection below from an interesting article on the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s love of American hard boiled detective fiction. Wittgenstein is not known for being an easy read amongst philosophers! Zimmerman provides a nice summation of why we like the fiction we do. This has pretty much always been my own approach to fiction. I …
This post was originally intended as a bare-bones response to Bruno Latour’s challenge to list hopes for change emerging out of the coronavirus crisis, but ended up being prefaced by a preamble on my difficulties with writing and a reflection on my current context. For quite some time, I have suffered (and I use the …
Foucault has this to say about “self-expression”: I don’t believe in the virtue of using language for “self-expression”. The language that interests me is the one that can actually destroy all the circular, enclosed, narcissistic forms of the subject and of oneself. And what I mean by ‘the end of man’ is, deep down, the …
This sounds like an interesting read. The adulation of ‘busyness’ is definitely something I’ve noticed in the last couple of decades at least. Bellezza, Silvia, Neeru Paharia, and Anat Keinan. “Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol.” Journal of Consumer Research 44, no. 1 (June 2017): 118-138. Abstract While …
Tyler Cowen, Americans own less stuff because of the internet, and that’s a worry, Financial Review Aug 13 2018 Lately I’ve been worrying about a problem of the latter kind: the erosion of personal ownership and what that will mean for our loyalties to traditional American concepts of capitalism and private property. […] The nation was based on …
It is often argued that Foucault adopts a relativist view of history. This couldn’t be further from the truth (no pun intended). It is much more complex than that. Most often it means in coded form ‘Foucault’s view and interpretation of history and events is at odds with my own view’. If we have different …
Svend Brinkmann, Stand Firm. Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze, Trans. Tam McTurk, Cambridge: Polity, 2017 Another book I will be reading through on this blog. This short and entertaining anti self-help book is an absolute gem. I will admit I am a bit of a self-help junkie, but prefer works that offer practical (and not too …
This fantastic book is now available in English at a prohibitive price unfortunately. This deserved cheap paperback status so that many could buy it. See the review I translated back in 2013. Publication blurb and details below. Pascal Chabot, Global Burnout, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018 Available for the first time in English and freshly adapted as …
More reflections prompted by: Clare Cooper Marcus, House as a mirror of self. Exploring the deeper meaning of home, Lake Worth, Nicolas Hays, 2006 [1995]. To add to my miscellany of definitions of home, Cooper Marcus (pp. 105-6) refers to a 1979 work by David Seamon with a strong Heideggerian theme, A geography of the lifeworld. …
Refracted Input 