In his Biography of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell’s entry for Tuesday, September 23, 1777 (little over a year subsequent to the issuance of the Declaration of Independence of the 13 colonies, 41 of whose 56 signers, it is said, were slaveowners) reports the following: “He [Dr. Johnson] had always been […]
“The police aren’t there to create disorder, they’re there to preserve disorder.” – Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago, 1968 “Anarchy is order; government is civil war.” – Anselme Bellegarrigue, France, 1850 This past summer, reacting to the mass nationwide uprising that erupted following the police murder of George Floyd (ironically, on […]
For Kamau Brathwaite, in memoriam The word “apocalypse” is commonly equated with a cataclysmic world-ending, heralded by all manner of natural disasters from plagues to earthquakes and tempests, and marked by the violent deaths of multitudes. Yet its original meaning has to do with revelation, a laying bare of those […]
Recalling his first encounter with Martinican poet Aimé Césaire’s writing in 1941, André Breton observed that “what was said there was what had to be said,” thus placing under the sign of necessity the audacity and expressive freedom he perceived in that work. Breton quoted Césaire’s declaration, “We belong to […]
An tears will not satisfy I to preserve a democrisy whereby youtful lives pay de penalty for politicians’ irresponsibility Michael Smith In his essay “Notes on the House of Bondage,” James Baldwin, contemplating the dispiriting presidential choices in the 1980 election year, dismissed both major candidates for being “as well […]
“It is not a matter of governing; still less of being governed.” Marcel Havrenne Hannah Arendt reminds us that “…to the Greeks, private life seemed ‘idiotic’ because it lacked the diversity that comes with speaking about something and thus the experience of how things really function in the world” (Arendt […]
Humans live by and through stories, those told to them and those they tell themselves and others. As one such type of story, the fable is of particular importance in shaping consciousness insofar as its intent is to impart moral guidance for living in the world, often conveyed into the […]
Darkest Before Dawn?August 29, 2021
To Outwit HistoryAugust 29, 2021
“An act of survival and a strategy to heal:” Suné Woods Interview and PerformanceAugust 29, 2021
Dred Scott’s Blues: Three MeditationsAugust 29, 2021