Posted on

Yet, despite the widening of the general frame, Orientalism still reigns; though it’s not as brazen, its subtle forms are everywhere.

Same As It Ever Was: Orientalism Forty Years Later.

Philip Metres reflects upon Edward Said, Othering, and the representation of Arabs in US culture.

Posted on

If I tell you “the sky is green,” it’s not so much my goal that you believe me instantly. My goal is rather to reiterate the claim that the sky is green until your resources to endure this dissonance are depleted and you give in and say, “that’s your opinion. I think the sky is blue. I guess there’s no way to determine the color of the sky objectively.”

Constant untruths eventually wear away the brain.

Say No to Trump’s Lies by Marina Weisband
Posted on

More than 2,000 people are missing. Towns are practically wiped off the map. People’s homes have been torched.

That isn’t a scene from a horror movie, it’s the aftermath of a brutal terrorist attack in Nigeria. And few people are talking about it. (via micdotcom)

[…] 

I haven’t really said anything about the mass killings by Boko Haram because I literally have no words. Beyond horrifying. I have words to describe what is happening in Paris, in Belgium, in Germany, in the US. I have words to describe why the world isn’t paying enough attention: Northern Nigeria is far away for Western media, conceptually even further away than geographically. Ebola only became a problem when a handful of Western citizens fell ill, meanwhile hundreds if not thousands are ill and dying in Western Africa. But that is not within our white Western bubble, beyond the circle of our collective attention, maybe even beyond our collective imagination. Most importantly, it is beyond the very specific discourse we in the West – media, pundits, politicians, and the public – want to have about terrorism since 9/11: Terrorism is something that is committed by Muslim extremist brown men and happens to white Christian citizens. The Boko Haram atrocities don’t fit that narratie, so the story isn’t being told.

Posted on

Your Papers and Footnotes, Please

Tim Parks questions the necessity of footnotes and strict references in academic publications:

There is, in short, an absolutely false, energy-consuming, nit-picking attachment to an outdated procedure that now has much more to do with the sad psychology of academe than with the need to guarantee that the research is serious. By all means, on those occasions where a book exists only in paper and where no details about it are available online, then let us use the traditional footnote. Otherwise, why not wipe the slate clean, start again, and find the simplest possible protocol for ensuring that a reader can check a quotation. Doing so we would probably free up three or four days a year in every academic’s life. A little more time to glean quotes from Barthes, Borges, and Derrida…

I must admit that I question texts that aren’t referenced, even on tumblr, and really like having footnotes, despite usually ignoring the actual content of the footnotes when reading for pleasure….

[For the sake of it: Parks, Tim. “References, Please.” NYRblog. N.p., 13 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Sept. 2014.}