Blog

Gender-Neutral -e Ending In Spanish Is Starting To Catch On (Except At The Royal Spanish Academy)

‘Latinx” may seem ungainly in English, but it’s very awkward in Spanish. But use of latine as an alternative to latino/a, a formulation which started in Argentina (where even some universities, politicians and judges have started using it), is spreading among young people in Latin America and Spain, as is the -e ending more generally. Yet the Real Academia Española, the official arbiter of the language of Cervantes, will have nothing to do with it. That may not matter so much: as one Ecuadorian copy editor tells a reporter, the RAE is, quite literally, “a colonialist institution.” – The World (PRX)

How Fashion Appropriated The Styles Of Enslaved People

The experiences of enslaved people were not always deemed important enough to record for posterity, and the glimpses that have been preserved are often distorted by interventions of enslavers. We are left to wonder: Who are they? What were their names? What were their favorite colors? Why did they choose to be photographed on these particular occasions? Why did they style themselves in these ways? – Guernica

Art Versus Ideology – A Philosophical Battle

“No living artist I know of, however fervently activist, is renouncing art as a distraction from moral commitment, as the more extreme Constructivists did. But a good deal of recent polemical art suggests a use-by date that is not far in the future. Aesthetic judgment, based in experience, confirms differences between what is of its time and what, besides being of its time, may prove timeless. I feel that our present moment, marked by imbroglios of art and politics, forces the issue, even in face of tendencies a century old.” – The New Yorker

Disability As A Social Construct (Am I Really Disabled?)

“For most of my life, I’ve been used to thinking of disabled people in the mainstream way – that is, in the third person. When I tick ‘yes’, I still can’t quite believe it. Even after eight years of paying close attention to disability scholarship and activism, when I picture disability, my mind still defaults to the stock images: the wheelchair symbol, the guide dog, the white stick, the prosthetic limb, the accessible toilet.” But… – Aeon

Do We Need A New Liberalism?


“Properly understood, liberalism offers an incomparably rich, four-century-long experimental history of a never-ending quest to find the best way for diverse people—and peoples—to live together well in conditions of freedom. It is a theoretical treasure trove and a practical experience bank. How telling, by contrast, that so-called “post-liberalism” cannot even come up with a proper name for itself; its very moniker reveals its epigonic character.” – Prospect

Since They Cancelled This Year’s Bad Sex In Fiction Award, Here’s Some Brand New Bad Sex In Fiction

“The judges offered the justification that ‘the public had been subjected to too many bad things this year to justify exposing it to bad sex as well,’ but come on — the bad things we’ve weathered in 2020 are exactly the reason we need to laugh and cringe at [execrable sex writing]. … The Literary Review judges admonished writers not to take the cancellation as ‘a license to write bad sex’ — but they abandoned us in our time of need so we don’t have to listen to them.” – Electric Literature

The Erasure of the Arts

To me the most salient feature of The Upswing, the important new book co-authored by the sociologist Robert Putnam (who also wrote Bowling Alone) on the disappearance of “social capital,” is incidental: the authors completely fail to consider the arts. In fact, I have the uncomfortable feeling that The Upswing may partly be a symptom of the shortcomings it observes. And it is not alone. – Joseph Horowitz