Works Reviewed: Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 379 pages. “Philosophy is useless, theology is worse.” There are times when this warning from the Dire Straits resounds,  not prophetically, but with the banal levity of a jingle. Stuck in within the mess of neurons we once called our minds tirelessly…

Esta noche me agarro una nostalgia fuerte para Bolivia. Para la Bolivia de mi juventud, y para su música. No la música tradicional sino el rock, el híbrido. La escena musical en cual participé. Como espectador, es verdad, pero sin embargo fue parte de mi realidad, una parte que se queda, de una forma que poco entiendo, hasta…

Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths, A.J. Bartlett, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011 (ISBN: 9780748643752) vii+248 pp. Every so often a book comes along that, in its utter relentlessness, forces its reader out of the complacency of his or her habits of thought. A.J. Bartlett’s latest offering, Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths,…

              Roberto Esposito Third Person: Politics of life and philosophy of the impersonal (Translated by Zakiya Hanafi) Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, 177 pages. At the outset of Third Person Roberto Esposito forcefully asserts that the category of person occupies an almost unassailable position in contemporary discourse. From analytic to…

Our Christian Call to Care for the Strangers in our Midst Posted on December 8, 2012 by Catholic Commons A Biblical and Theological Reflection Maggie Helwig The Hebrew scriptures are deeply marked by the experience of displacement. The story of the exile of Jacob’s descendents in Egypt, their time of wandering in the desert after being delivered from slavery,…

Le Roi reigne mail il ne gouverne pas.  Recently I wrote a letter to my local Member of Parliament  expressing concern over some of the provisions of Bill C-31 (the perversely titled “Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act) which is already beginning a much harsher and less hospitable place for refugees. The Canadian Council of Refugees…

Is This Child Dead Enough for You? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names I felt like this article bore sharing on this site. I have been deeply troubled over the last few days at the victory celebrations I have witnessed, in people I know and respect, celebrating the re-election of Barack Obama. People…

The twilight of the American Empire, it thus appears, will be remembered for its endless kill lists and its codification of murder. -Ben Schreiner  It is high time we learned to read the signs of the times. The epitaph above is taken from the recent Counterpunch article “Obama’s Endless Kill List.” In that article Schreiner…

In my view, ima­gin­a­tion is the cent­ral field of social trans­form­a­tion in the age of semiocapital.[2] Capitalist dom­in­a­tion is sus­tained by the per­sist­ence of men­tal cages that are struc­tured by the dog­mas of growth, com­pet­i­tion and rent. The epi­stem­o­lo­gical dic­tat­or­ship of this model – its grip on the dif­fer­ent spheres of human know­ledge – is the very ground of power. …

A few months ago, on July 21 to be exact, the world of journalism lost one of its bright lights. At the time I was completely unaware, was unaware in fact until a few days ago, that Alexander Cockburn even existed. It is probably a testament to my own erratic reading habits that I discovered…