Thabo Mbeki and Haiti
n 26 August 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted by the National Constituent Assembly in revolutionary Paris. The adoption of the Declaration has often been understood as a foundational moment in the development of the epoch in human history now often thought of as modernity. The […]
CONstellations: Appropriation and Inspiration
The Tiger and the Wolf (Echoes of the Fall Book One) Adrian Tchaikovsky Macmillan arry Potter author J.K. Rowling stirred some controversy recently with her appropriation of the sacred Navajo Skinwalker tradition in backgrounders posted for the movie Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them. The Con readers, hardened to Western generalisations about the […]
‘The Greatest’ 1942-2016
The Greatest: “Muhammad Ali, who died Friday, in Phoenix, at the age of seventy-four, was the most fantastical American figure of his era, a self-invented character of such physical wit, political defiance, global fame, and sheer originality that no novelist you might name would dare conceive him. Born Cassius Clay in Jim Crow-era Louisville, […]
The Quiet Protagonists
It is those of us with the most potential to propel civilisation forward who most often choose to abstain from engaging in civilisation altogether. To be fair, this abstinence from reality is usually not so much a choice as it is a paralysis, the paralysis caused by the anxiety of knowing how great one […]