Essays
Imperial Romance and American Dreams
If a thoughtful return to Kipling can wake us up from our settler capitalist fantasy, it is worth that return.
A Moment’s Hesitation: The Indirect Language of Similes
Unlike the metaphor, the simile signals its own happening. It deals in images and concepts, setting these next to each other while retaining their separate identities.
For Nietzsche, life’s ultimate question was: ‘Does it dance?’
Friedrich Nietzsche’s body of work is notoriously difficult to navigate. He wrote in multiple styles, including essays, aphorisms, poems, and fiction. He introduced idiosyncratic concepts such as the free spirit,…
Kafka’s Bestiary; or, Regarding a Remark of Adorno’s Never Said
“Auschwitz begins when one looks at a slaughterhouse and says, ‘they’re only animals’.” This quote is attributed to Theodor W. Adorno. Except he never said it. Despite this, at least…
The Jokes Always Saved Us: Humor in the Time of Stalin
Jokes never mean only one thing, and the hidden story of political humour under Stalin is far more nuanced than a simple struggle between repression and resistance.
Travels with My Daughter: the Himalayas
In October ’72 my ten-year-old daughter, Veronica, and I attempted to fly from Kathmandu to Lukla for the Khumbu trek to Thangyboche monastery, which lies at over 12,600 ft., across…
Subject to Change: On Not Having, or Being, it All
The word queer has gone through many transformations since it emerged in the 16th century. Originally, it meant “strange,” or “peculiar”: associated meanings included a feeling of unwellness or something…
A View From the Mountain
Peer into any of a hundred human hearts;you are sure to find, spun whole, thosemoments buried in the new growth of timepassing; the far-into-the-night-early-dawnexchanges, falling-outs and reconciliations,the wrestle with words…
Change the world, not yourself, or how Arendt called out Thoreau
Thoreau’s theory of civil disobedience inspired some of the world’s greatest political thinkers. Not Hannah Arendt.