In response to Adam’s question: I think that first it would be good to point out the rhetorical strategy of Blankenhorn’s op-ed just to establish some common field of tropes. So, here we have a conservative guy (I’m not going into what that means, as you, Adam, have a much more detailed view [...]
The following op-ed by David Blankenhorn in the New York Times addresses his volte-face on the issue of gay marriage. Here is a soundbite: With each passing year, we see higher and higher levels of unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation and family fragmentation among heterosexuals. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of [...]
“Le Dire précisément n’est pas un jeu.” Emmanuel Lévinas (“To be clear, Saying is no play. ”) “Perhaps the age of discussion is coming to an end after all.” Carl Schmitt (It’s summer in the city. A cool wind is blowing, drying off the moist spring on the back of our necks. Girls [...]
Ok, so I’m fed up with writing about the first exhibition of Albanian queer culture Kukafshehti that I curated together with Aleanca Kundër Diskriminimit LGBT last week in Tirana Ekspres, but I can refer you to an article on the HuffPost, “Albania: The Gay Movement You Never Imagined” and a surreal trackback on The Daily [...]
The 2012 Whitney Biennial is roundly praised in the media as it presents a very different and often difficult exhibition.
Yesterday night I was made aware of the existence of Artur Jaku, an Albanian peasant-film maker and one time contestant in Big Brother. According to the credit lines of his manifesto Albanian Monster, “Artur Jaku is the first farmer in the world, that made Amateur Dokumentary !!!” According to another, autobiographically inclined work, Artur [...]
Two regular contributors to continent., Adam Staley Groves and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, have had the honor of attending the New World Summit, organized at the occasion of the 7th Berlin Biennial by artist Jonas Staal. The following notes concern their combined impressions. The New World Summit defines itself as follows: (1) An [...]
“If two parties have armed themselves for strife, then a feeling of animosity must have moved them to it; as long now as they continue armed, that is, do not come to terms of peace, this feeling must exist; and it can only be brought to a standstill by either side by one single [...]
In the Netherlands, the annual calendar is marked by the singular occasion of what has been named “skirt day,” the spring day on which the collective female population decides — the mode and procedure of this decision are still unknown, at least, to men – to dress in skirts, celebrating the arrival of bearable and [...]
Neo-liberalism has become a bit of buzz word, replacing postmodernity (although the two are crucially interlinked). So two books and a film which provide excellent in-roads into the topic. First: Foulcault’s lectures on the “Birth of Biopolitics”, given in 1978-79, particularly lectures 4,5,9,10,11. He has the remarkable power of being able to condense the [...]