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…
The return of sacred violence
“Central to both torture and terror is the political psychology of degradation” Â 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…
Free speech and public service
A minor controversy has broken out in Australia over restrictions on the free speech of public…
Republics in distress
As I look around the world at the state of politics, I conclude that our democratic…
Poem: The state of politics
Poetry and politics make for strained companions. The politics of poets is unreliable, inclined to the…
On humility
For many years I have believed that Carl Jung once said or wrote that “you must…
On tyranny or terror?
The American historian of the holocaust in Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder has delivered in On Tyranny:…