“How many intellectuals have had three distinguished but very different careers in three different countries?” Michael Ignatieff spent more than 20 years in Britain as a broadcaster and writer, then went to the US as an academic (at Harvard) and a leading voice on human rights and terrorism policy. Three years ago he entered politics in his native Canada and he may well be the country’s next prime minister. What kind of man is this?
Tag: 2009
What The Fatwa Did
“Nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses, let alone publish it.” Hanif Kureishi, a Pakistani-British writer whose work (My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic) has roiled the U.K. Muslim community more than once, talks about how the anti-Rushdie fatwa changed his own writing.
Does Fidelity To Beckett’s Text Stifle Beckett As Theatre?
“Perversely, it seems to me, familiarity has made these plays more inaccessible: their visual motifs are so well known beforehand that they are more easily dismissed. Godot is ‘the one where nothing happens’; Endgame is ‘the one with the old pair in the bins’; Happy Days is ‘the one about the woman buried in the sand’.”
It’s Not Only Writers Who Get Blocked
“We tend to think of choreographers as particularly creative people. That may be true, but it does not mean that the ideas and movement flow every minute of the day. Just as writers have writer’s block, dancemakers sometimes get choreographer’s block.” Martha Clarke, Emily Molnar, Pascal Rioult, Keely Garfield and Gesel Mason talk about getting stuck.
The Backlash Against Experimental Philosophy
As the hip new school of philosophy (often called “x-phi”) tests ideas with actual experiments, there has been some pushback. “A philosophical problem is not an empirical problem, a fact is not an interpretation, an ‘is’ is not an ‘ought,’ a description of how we actually behave and think is not a rationale for how we should behave and think.”
The Experience Of Movies Becomes Yet More Incorporeal
“As cinema becomes more portable, more easily created, and less difficult to acquire, it also runs the risk of forfeiting one of its greatest attributes – its physicality. Its necessary exertions… the physical act of seeking and watching. This death will necessarily impact the kind of films we make and how we make them.”
Did Abolitionism Lead To Evolutionism?
“Although he never admitted publicly to so political a motivation,” because of what he witnessed aboard the Beagle, “anti-slavery sentiment was the handmaiden of Charles Darwin’s great intellectual achievement – the theory of evolution.”
The Origins Of ‘Good Taste’
“During the 17th century, Britain witnessed the birth of a consumer society. But, as the number of possessions grew, so did the concept of ‘taste’, a subtle and elusive yardstick by which people advertised their social position and sensibilities.”
What If The New York Times Stopped Printing, Say, This May?
“At some point soon – sooner than most of us think – the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist.… What would a post-print Times look like?” Michael Hirschorn has some ideas.