The tragedy of the modern university
Jordan Peterson has proposed the creation of an alternative to the modern university that offers free…
Able Archer 83 and the virtue of human decision making
Over the weekend I read Taylor Downing, 1983: the world at the brink. It gave me…
Bureaucratic utopianism
Bureaucracy is not meant to be Utopian. After all, is not bureaucracy the home of the…
Borderlands of madness
Demi-fous. Mazeland. Dazeland. Driftland. Incipient lunatics. Hysterics. Neurotics. Carriers of latent brain disease. Neurasthenia. Sufferers of…
Renovating the Burning Archive
I have spent the morning renovating the Burning Archive. A new theme changes the look and…
On the history and meaning of the eight hour day
The story I told in this article still has resonance for me. It was a story about how, even in the apparently material conditions that defined work and industrial conflict, the meaning of events were inseparable from the striving for recognition and the webs of significance that we, culture-making beings, weave through the time of our lives.
culture / history / literature
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
“This whole city has become a desert.” Ghalib 1861 William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal: the Fall…
The reenchantment of the world
This morning I feel stuck for words. A heat wave has exhausted me, and the end…
Return of a King
Image credit: Elizabeth Butler, Remnants of an Army (1879) Tate Gallery I have finished reading William…
Sailing to Byzantium
Since I am on holidays from work, and not consumed with duties and obligations, I have…