Pandaemonium

OLD-FASHIONED IN GOOD WAYS AND BAD

October 21, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the legacy of Howard Bloom, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on techno-utopia and techno-dystopia.) It was published on 20 October 2019, under the headline ‘Harold Bloom was right to extol great literature, but was often blind to who was neglected’. There are good ways of being old-fashioned and there are bad. One may seek to preserve important practices or ways of thinking in the face of fashion. One may also […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: dante, harold bloom, identity politics, the canon, the western canon, toni morrison

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #64

October 19, 2019 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. The US is now betraying the Kurds for the eighth time Joe Schwartz, The Intercept, 7 October 2019 The U.S. has now betrayed the Kurds a minimum of eight times over the past 100 years. The reasons for this are straightforward. The Kurds are an ethnic group of about 40 million people centered at the intersection of Turkey, […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE SHIFTING LINES OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

October 14, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the changing character of anti-German chauvinism and the contested lines of Britain’s relationship to its past, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘We can mention the war. Should we now talk about Britain’s darker history?’ ‘I wonder if Kenan Malik is clear that the “Don’t mention the war” episode of Fawlty Towers is intended to make fun of the British obsession with the Second World War that he criticises?’ So wrote an […]

Categories: Britain, History, Politics • Tags: angela merkel, anti-german chauvinism, brexit, don't mention the war, far right, fawlty towers, germany, john cleese, nazism, nigel farage, peterloo, racism, richard tice, susan neiman

THE SPEED OF HUMAN IMAGINATION

October 12, 2019 by Kenan Malik

Some sporting moments achieve mythical status because of their sheer audacity. Muhammad Ali’s ‘rumble in the jungle’ defeat of George Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974 to regain his world heavyweight title comes to mind. Others astound with a seemingly impossible perfection such as Nadia Comăneci’s perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. And then there are those that astonish by redefining one’s perception of what it’s possible for a human being to achieve. Eliud Kipchoge’s completion of […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: eliud kipchoge, marathon, roger bannister

THE POLITICAL GHOSTS OF EUGENICS MAY MATTER MORE THAN THE GENETIC

October 7, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the political legacy of the eugenics movement, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘The spirit of eugenics is still with us, as immigrants know to their cost’. Birth control. Intelligence tests. Town planning. Immigration controls. It’s striking how much of contemporary life has been shaped, at least in part, by the eugenics movement, as Eugenics: Science’s Greatest Scandal, a two-part BBC documentary by science writer Angela Saini and disability campaigner […]

Categories: History, Science • Tags: adam pearson, aldous huxley, angela saini, beatrice webb, david attenborough, eugenics, forced sterilisation, francis galton, immigration, population control, poverty, richard dawkins, working class

TO BE TRANSPORTED SOMEWHERE TRANSCENDENT

October 5, 2019 by Kenan Malik

When the US soprano Jessye Norman appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1981, her first choice was Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, with the great African American contralto Marian Anderson. Norman had been ten years old when she first heard that recording. “I listened, thinking, ‘But this can’t just be a voice! A voice doesn’t sound this rich and beautiful,’” she told the music critic Matthew Gurewitsch. Many felt the same about Norman, who died last week. Sumptuous. Voluptuous. Shimmering. Majestic. The descriptions of her voice […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: jessye norman, music, opera, richard strauss

THE RETURN OF UNIVERSALISM TO SOCIAL POLICY

September 30, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debates about universal basic income and universal basic services, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Naga Munchetty controversy.) It was published on 29 September 2019, under the headline ‘These radical ideas might seem utopian but at least they fire the imagination’. Back in May, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, suggested that if Labour won the next election it would launch pilot schemes for universal basic income (UBI). The aim of […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: andrew percy, guy standing, howard reed, john mcdonnell, jonathan portes, labour party, ubi, ubs, universal basic income, universal basic services, universalism

SOMETHING INSIDE THAT COULD BE SET FREE

September 28, 2019 by Kenan Malik

From the outside, the Italian Chapel on Orkney would barely catch your eye. Yet, it is a remarkable building, with a remarkable history. A house of God that is also is a monument to the human spirit. In January 1942, more than a thousand Italian prisoners of war, captured mainly in North Africa, were brought to Orkney. They were needed to construct the Churchill Barriers – four causeways that today act as links between a number of the southern Orkney islands […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: italian chapel, orkney, photography

SEEING THE MESSENGER NOT THE MESSAGE

September 23, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the dangers of being more agitated by the messenger than the message for both politics and journalism, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the global spread of AI surveillance.) It was published on 22 September 2019, under the headline ‘Boris Johnson’s confrontation: don’t lose sight of the real story’. ‘The problem with politicians and political activists is that they are trapped in their own little bubbles.’ If there’s one complaint […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: amelia gentleman, boris johnson, british politics, conservative party, journalism, labour party, laura kuenssberg, omar salem, windrush scandal

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #63

September 21, 2019 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Modi’s war Praveen Donthi, The Caravan, 22 September 2019 The Indian government has devised certain indicators to find and prove normalcy in Kashmir: the number of primary schools reopened, the number of police stations that have relaxed restrictions in their neighbourhood, the number of active landlines in an age of mobile phones. Reducing […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE QUESTION WE NEVER ASK ABOUT IMMIGRATION PANICS

September 16, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the common features of immigration panics across the globe, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short tribute to the photographer Robert Frank.) It was published on 15 September 2019, under the headline ‘From India to Britain, every citizen is harmed by anti-migrant hostility’. In the Indian state of Assam, the authorities are building detention camps for ‘illegal immigrants’, most of whom are Indian citizens. In South Africa, hundreds of Nigerian workers have been airlifted home […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-migrant violence, assam, bangladesh war of independence, bjp, cyril ramaphosa, immigration, immigration panics, india, muslims, narendra modi, national register of citizens, nrc, racism, south africa, windrush scandal, xenophobia

‘AN AMERICA WE REFUSED TO LOOK AT’

September 14, 2019 by Kenan Malik

‘A wart-covered picture of America by a joyless man’, wrote the photographer and critic Minor White. ‘A sad poem by a very sick person’, snorted Popular Photography. The object of their scorn was The Americans, a collection of images of American life by the photographer Robert Frank, who died last week, aged 94. It is difficult today to recognize how revolutionary was Frank’s work when it was first published 60 years ago. His style, his mode of observation, his subject matter […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Photos • Tags: photography, robert frank, usa

THE ILLIBERALISM OF THE PHILOSOPHER OF LIBERALISM

September 9, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and the meaning of tolerance, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on politics as drama.) It was published on 8 September 2019, under the headline ‘Why western liberals have long picked the wrong historical hero’. Lost in the library of a small American college has lain a text by one of England’s foremost philosophers that no one knew he had written. ‘Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: catholicism, enlightenment, free speech, jonathan israel, liberalism, locke, radical enlightenment, religious freedom, spinoza, tolerance

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #62

September 7, 2019 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . The emptiness of an ending Amanda Hammer, Africa is a Country, 8 September 2019 A day dawned with an early call. Mugabe was dead. And then, nothing. Nothing at all in my heart and mind. Just a gaping, blank canvas, waiting for a clear script to form out of the morass of […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE OPIOID CRISIS AND THE EXPLOITATION OF PAIN

September 2, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the opioid crisis in America, its roots and its lessons, was published in the Observer on 1 September 2019 under the headline ‘America’s opioid catastrophe has lessons for us all, about greed and racial division’. (I have restored a couple of paragraphs that I had to remove for reasons of space in the Observer.) ‘We’ll build a wall to keep the damn drugs out.’ So insisted Donald Trump at a rally last year to launch the White […]

Categories: International, Science • Tags: big phrama, david herzberg, donald trump, free market, johnson & johnson, medicine, opioid crisis, pharmaceutical companies, purdue phrama, racism, usa, war on drugs, working class