In 2017 Francis Fukuyama published two podcasts providing a retrospective account of his essay, "The End of History" (1989) which was later published in more extended form as the book The End of History and The Last Man, in 1992, 25 years ago. I had bought Fukuyama's book, back in the early 1990s, when I... Continue Reading →
I was asked the other day in conversation with a friend, what was the best thing about this year? She had earlier said the best thing was the collapse of Donald Trump's opinion poll ratings. After a little thought, I said, perhaps perversely, the best thing about the year was Donald Trump's presidency because it... Continue Reading →
In reviewing my notes for the year - diligently if effortlessly recorded in Evernote - I came across my discovery of an essay from the late 1970s by Leszek Kolakowski, "How to be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist." I do not recall how I discovered this gem, as apposite to our times as Kolakowski's exile from Poland in... Continue Reading →
A short post. The miracle of literature: how words crafted for another voice, at another time, pierce the carapace of habit, strike at deep wounds, and reveal a way of being. From my reading last night: The Task (Czeslaw Milosz) In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life Only if I brought... Continue Reading →
Persistence Twelve months ago I was approaching Christmas and the end of a liberating period of long service leave. It was a period of leave that rejuvenated my writing and my living. It returned a sense of adventure and courage to my cultural life. I found a way through this blog to weave together my... Continue Reading →
The year is drawing to a close, and while it is yet weeks from New Year, the office christmas party season is in full swing, and my mind is turning to an upcoming holiday. I am approaching the end of my current assignment and am going into my annual leave without knowing what I will... Continue Reading →
"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside... Continue Reading →
Over recent weeks I have chanced upon a few biographical articles on Michel Foucault. One was an account of Foucault's use of LSD in Death Valley on a road trip with some fellow academics in the 1970s. Another was speculation that in the late 1970s Foucault was too close to neo-liberal ideas that would attack... Continue Reading →
"The storm of progress now threatens to burn the remaining archives of human memory. In an infinite set of information, no tradition holds fast. Where then does the Orphean writer look, if not like this angel towards the past, while being blown irresistibly forward by a fire storm?" This blogger, July 2015, (his first post... Continue Reading →
"I have never been able to find in any man’s book or any man’s talk anything … to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world." Joseph Conrad, 1922, in correspondence with Bertrand Russell. A new biography of Joseph Conrad has come out. The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in... Continue Reading →
I have over the last year or so frequently relaxed in a meditative trance while listening to soft-spoken readings of poetry. Set against moody electronic music, the softly but precisely enunciated words penetrate to unknown chambers of the mind. Who this poet trance reader is, I do not know, but I appreciate her readings, stripped... Continue Reading →
During the week I attended a lecture at my old university on the meaning of the Russian Revolution today, 100 years on from Red October. The lecturer, Mark Edele, gave an entertaining and insightful talk to perhaps 600 guests, some alumni, some students, some dignitaries associated with the large philanthropic donation that had enabled the... Continue Reading →
The Burning Archive 