Hildegart Rodriguez, Clay Shirky, Sudhir Venkatesh, Peter Moskos
Venkatesh and Moskos both put themselves at the centre of their respective narratives, and thus make much more of the cultural gulf between cops and dealers on one hand, and academics and writers on the other.
Shirky and other digital evangelists argue the rise of social media is actually a severe challenge to the elite’s hegemony and authority.
Hildegart’s tragedy may well come to occupy a niche of bizarre but instructive prominence in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.
It can only be assumed that, much like the story, the dogs merely ran around chasing each other’s tails until they collapsed with a worn out thud.
Hal himself is notably absent, occasionally appearing in silhouette scaling a wall (a small section of a climbing wall, with none of the Siberian proportions the blurb suggested).
The impossibilty of of Hedda’s situation does not ring true in a modern context, and Kirkwood’s only solution is to paint her as an appallingly spoilt snob, refusing work which is ‘beneath her’ while dripping with boredom and ennui.
Steve Fuller’s Dissent over Descent, Paul Ginsborg’s Democracy, more from the Edinburgh Fringe and a eulogy for Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
This combination of fortitude, darkness, history but enduring humour embodied by Fermin is also the incarnation of Zafon’s depiction of post-War Spain; a fragmented and unsettled country. There is a sadness that hangs over Barcelona as so many people carry the scars of loss and fear that the years of the Civil War effected.
Whilst on one level, being suspicious of elite organisations and challenging the unearned political authority of science is useful, Fuller misses the point that just because the elite believe it, doesn’t make it automatically wrong for the rest of us to agree.
Philosophy’s place in popular culture today is centred on self-improvement and egoism; this demeans the potential of philosophical enquiry whilst enforcing the idea that academic philosophy is completely inaccessible.
As a humble citizen participating in one of these schemes, you cannot have faith that every individual will respect your views, since those who make the final decisions are not accountable to you.
The dialectic of home and exile enables a poetry, not of hope – in this case, the always-present longing for return – but of creation. Home is not the land you knew and will greet again (though Darwish would remain throughout his life a defender of the Palestinian cause), but a place impossibly unknown
Coverage of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and a restrospective look at Lebanon, Hadrian, Monument Park in Budapest and The Curse of History.
Rather than seeing the problems of those countries as a result of their immediate circumstances and in particular their relationship to modernity, many writers go searching for answers in the depths of history. It has become almost obligatory for every book about Middle Eastern politics to recount tales from the early years of Islam and conclude they have an immediate presence in the mind of modern-day Arabs.
