The lesson we learn from the 14th century is that the world does not tolerate insupportable ideas. Modernity is one such idea and, although it may take generations, it will pass away.
Category: Head
The category, Head, is for posts that make us think.
2020 Reading Roundup
For me, books only gain significance as they fall into conversation with other books or as they enlarge the space available for conversation with the wider world. There is no book, only books.
The Great Reset, Klaus Schwab & Thierry Malleret
Although The Great Reset has become the flashpoint for conspiracy lunatics, it is important to ignore the noise they produce. Push through. Read the book in its intended spirit: as the start of a wide-ranging conversation about our collective future.
The Blue Clerk, by Dionne Brand
Another way of thinking about the narrative is to treat it as a neurological drama: the author (recto) and the blue clerk (verso) are metaphorical ways of reflecting the bicameral structure of the human brain.
2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize Nominees
Polar Vortex, Shani Mootoo (Toronto: Book*hug, 2020) Polar Vortex opens with a dream. Priya, a lesbian of Indian descent, immigrant from Trinidad, now settled with her white spouse, Alex, in white bread Prince Edward County, awakes from the riotous colours of an Indian wedding ritual which culminates in sex with a man, not with any…
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, by Olivia Laing
As in The Lonely City, Laing views today’s funny weather as a continuation of gusts we felt in the early days of AIDS when the Reagan administration chose not merely to do nothing but actively to make life miserable for hundreds of thousands of those infected.
Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet
This tetralogy is a remarkable achievement, offering a clear-eyed view of the times without resorting to the usual maudlin emotions—outrage, disbelief. Instead, through her wise art, she offers us reassurance.
The Origins of Totalitarianism in the Age of Trump
There is a temptation to treat Arendt like the American Psychiatric Association’s DSMV: if an authoritarian leader meets enough of the documented criteria, then we can diagnose him with the political disease called totalitarianism.
50th Anniversary of the October Crisis
When we reached the Ontario/Québec border, we had to wait to pass through a blockade where soldiers stopped each car and questioned the driver. It was the first time I had ever seen soldiers walking around with guns. I had no idea what to make of it.
Making Art in a Pandemic
It has become a commonplace to observe that the Covid-19 pandemic exposes some of the weaknesses inherent in the way we organize ourselves as social beings. For example, through the mechanisms of the capitalist labour market, we have collectively agreed that certain modes of work are not terribly important. We know this because we don’t…
Microbe Hunters Then And Now
Through offhand remarks which strike us today as thoroughly gratuitous, de Kruif allows his own personality to infect his stories with sexism, racism, anti-immigrant sentiments, and a wide assortment of other bigotries that, were he alive today, would make him the darling of Trump’s White House.
Self-Control in the Age of Covid-19
There are 478 new infections in Ontario, the most on a single day since May 2nd. This includes 153 new cases in Toronto.There is something about this I find dispiriting. The number itself is not dispiriting so much as what the number tells me about human nature.
Yours, for probably always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters
This is a curated collection of letters both from Martha Gellhorn and addressed to her from a variety of correspondents, most notably H. G. Wells and Eleanor Roosevelt, interpolated with Janet Somerville’s contextual notes. The overall effect is much like a tragic epistolary novel of grand dimensions.
Benford’s Law and Photography
We tend to think the distribution of first digits in any given data set will be equal; there will be as many ones as eights. However, an empirical analysis of data sets demonstrates again and again that there are far more ones in our universe than any other number.
Zadie Smith and Intimations of “Real Suffering”
Popular discourse has thought closely about privilege, but is utterly vapid when it comes to suffering. While it’s true that writers almost universally address suffering as an experience, almost none address it as a discursive category.