Exploratory CW essay pieces look at the broader trends in contemporary society, politics and culture.

A selection of the Battle of Ideas’ Battles in Print is also available here.

Expecting the unexpected

Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut

When Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens, this does not mean he was taken to the reality of his train of thought or stream of consciousness; it does not have a metaphorical meaning. In the context of Slaughterhouse 5, Billy Pilgrim really is abducted by aliens – or at least it has been written to be understood as so; this does not sustain an ‘allegorical’ or ‘poetic’ interpretation.

The Theatre of Protest

Forty years on from les événements, is the UK seeing the blossoming of a new, theatrical protest movement?

Similarly theatrical is the recognition that the human body is a symbolic site - be it dancing in the confines of kettle-raves, sportsday in Topshop, the spontaneous choreography of facing an armoured police line, or being violently dragged from a wheelchair. Indeed, when Cameron decries ‘the mob’, he is like a particularly insensitive critic, failing or refusing to grasp the nature of a very complex and energetic ensemble piece.

Interest-free?

The Return of the Public, by Dan Hind (Verso, 2010)

Hind effectively conflates Kant’s notion of public reason as a scholarly ideal with the whole idea of public participation in politics. The effect is to restrict severely what counts as properly ‘public’ participation, and even public opinion.

Probably the best advertising strategy in the world

Carlsberg don't make TV programmes... But the future of advertising could be content produced by advertisers themselves

Wouldn’t it just be more civilised for a nation’s cultural life to revolve around something other than deliciously crunchy breakfast cereals and not believing it’s not butter?

Rethinking Asia

Adapting to a different world view

Buy a world map in China, and China (the Middle Kingdom) is in the centre; not ragged islands on the edges of Europe, fringed by a small sea. We have not come to terms with Asia’s rise, and can have no conception of what it means for us (beyond, perhaps, a nagging anxiety that it can’t be good). As power shifts to the twin giants of China and India, we can only realise we are small, and what we think might not matter very much.

Mobility tomorrow: just take a cab!

On the future of innovation

Government, economists and product developers would be well advised to concentrate on those recommendations made by futurologists that consider the wishes of the user. The needs of the customer decide whether a technological innovation becomes successful or not, and the user prefers those innovations that improve upon existing technologies in the fields of energy, communications and mobility by dissolving the tensions between robustness, safety and cost-effectiveness without any compromise.

This is fact, not fiction (on biography)

Many writers, and examples could easily come from the sci-fi genre, did not have to endure the predicaments present in their characters and their plots in order to write. Furthermore, normalcy, or middle-class bourgeois normalcy, is, these days, predicament enough. Still, each individual’s account, in fiction or real life, is full of drama because it is one’s own.

Beyond normality

Serbian art ten years after Milošević

The process of transition towards liberal democracy has been portrayed as a process of normalisation. The West, according to this reading of history, is the embodiment of the historical standard, and what is wrong with the institutions in the East is that they are not yet Western. Artists and curators in Serbia have been persistent in offering alternative readings of the recent political changes in their country.

Character, education and the role of the state

Of Good Character: Exploration of Virtues and Values in 3-25 Year-Olds, by James Arthur (Imprint Academic, 2010)

For Arthur, character is ‘an interlocked set of personal values which normally guide conduct. Character is about who we are and who we become, which can result in good or bad conduct.’ If character is about values then it’s important where we get these values from. Surely teaching children good values in school is preferable to law of the jungle in terms of peer pressure and media messages?

Brought to book

What are libraries for?

Libraries are not only a public service but a fought-for part of our heritage. But is the provision of Catherine Cookson novels to pensioners something the state should fund? If people are not using libraries why should funding continue?

A return to beauty and civility?

Contemporary art may be embracing the long-unfashionable idea of beauty once more

In 2010, it is safe to say that a shift is occurring once again, this time, away from the vacuous and the obscene; an ever increasing sense of ‘de nouveau’ is now surging through the citadel of contemporary art.

Grow your own?

Urban Farming: The future of food or Arcadia on the cheap?

Viewed in historic terms, this seems like an aristocratic attack on the bourgeoisie. Think I’m joking? Prince Charles is a big fan of urban agriculture, with good reason. He has large estates that he has every interest in keeping out of the reach of the masses.

‘The Big Society’ (or ‘Compulsory Voluntarism’)

A paper given to the Muslim Institute Summer Conference, Cardiff, 24 July 2010

‘The Compact Code of Good Practice on Volunteering’ continues: ‘The key element (of volunteering) that it is freely undertaken’ (my italics). Maybe the government thinks that this simply means ‘done for free’ but in fact it describes an activity ‘willingly, uncoercedly or generously’ given. As such, it is about the rights of the person who gives up his/her time.

Big Two-Hearted Hemingway

Lost in the life of a dead writer we’ve never met but whom foolishly we think know well

Hemingway hasn’t been, not since the 1940s, a mere writer and man, but a preposterous piece of Americana, a living riposte to a 20th century that seemed to otherwise deplete opportunities for masculine privilege and duty as the years of industrialisation, commercialisation, domestication, and entertainment-media saturation rolled on.

Laduuummaaaaaaaaa!

A short essay on the future of South Africa, and football.

South Africa is ready but there is a long way to go before they achieve their dream goal.