More reflections on 2017: The end of history revisited
In 2017 Francis Fukuyama published two podcasts providing a retrospective account of his essay, “The End…
More reflections on 2017: a multi-polar world
I was asked the other day in conversation with a friend, what was the best thing…
Reflections on 2017: cultural decay and political institutions
In reviewing my notes for the year – diligently if effortlessly recorded in Evernote – I…
More reflections on 2017: persistence, terror and Das Schloss
Persistence Twelve months ago I was approaching Christmas and the end of a liberating period of…
Forgetting Foucault
Over recent weeks I have chanced upon a few biographical articles on Michel Foucault. One was…
Conrad’s darkness
“I have never been able to find in any man’s book or any man’s talk anything…
Red Nostalgia
During the week I attended a lecture at my old university on the meaning of the…
Fragile identities, fragile memories
It is justice which extracts from traumatizing remembrances their exemplary value, turns memory into a project, and it…
The return of sacred violence
“Central to both torture and terror is the political psychology of degradation” Paul Kahn, Sacred violence:…
The death of the soul
In The Australian this weekend Greg Sheridan, the conservative and perceptive foreign affairs journalist, comments on…