A Case for Pretending: Why Identity Is a Sham and Authenticity an Illusion
The tighter we cling to any aspect of self-identity, the more we suffer and the more vital it becomes to release our grip.
philosophy
Albert Camus’ Struggles with Earthly Existence in ‘Travels in the Americas’
The Albert Camus of Travels in the Americas diaries is a passionate, despairing reckoner with the struggles of earthly existence, both personal and societal.
Rick Rubin’s Minimalist/Maximalist ‘The Creative Act’
Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act is, as his rap often was, minimalist and maximalist – musically austere but lyrically extravagant and self-aggrandizing.
Philosophy and Pop Harmonize on Scritti Politti’s ‘Songs to Remember’
In Scritti Politti’s Songs to Remember, Green Gartside comically challenges hegemonic structures in a perfect harmony of philosophy and pop.
Horror Video Game ‘Silent Hill’ Explores Dark Paradoxes in Normalcy
Inspired by Japanese Buddhism and American pop culture, the grotesque is a metaphor for normalcy in the horror video game Silent Hill.
Alien or Alienated? The Monstrous, the Normal, and the Tragic in Our Borders
Shakespeare, Knut Hamsun, Flannery O’Connor, and the Medieval Icelandic Göngu-Hrolfs saga each explore who is the alien, and who is alienated, within our borders.
Antonio Gramsci Biography ‘To Live Is to Resist’ Is Unrivaled
In Gramscian fashion, Frétigné details the material conditions of Antonio Gramsci’s insight and influence while shirking historical determinism and abstract idealism.
Undone Apart: Artistry and Philosophy in Graphic Adventure Game ‘Life Is Strange’
Why create such a highly-fictionalized, aestheticized setting as Life Is Strange to express the confusion and contradictions of life?
Landing Instructions for Derrida
In his book, An Event, Perhaps, Derrida's intellectual development is adroitly unpacked by Peter Salmon without bamboozling the reader or peddling dime-store psychologizing.
Literary Scholar Andrew H. Miller On Solitude As a Common Bond
Andrew H. Miller’s On Not Being Someone Else considers how contemplating other possibilities for one’s life creates meaning in the life one leads.
The Singularity of Žižek
According to Slavoj Žižek's latest work, Hegel in a Wired Brain, a new kind of Fall from the Fall is necessary.
Choosing Experience in Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Taste of Cherry’
Critic Roger Ebert was frustrated with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry because the film subverts our desire to understand another -- the very core of cinema's intent.