Author Archives: Kenan Malik

AMERICAN DIRT, IDENTITY AND IMAGINATION

February 10, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the controversy over the novel American Dirt, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on citizenship, moral principles and hard cases.) It was published on 9 February 2020, under the headline ‘Stop telling authors what they can write. The only limit is imagination’. ‘What insults my soul’, Zadie Smith has written, ‘is the idea… that we can and should write only about people who are fundamentally ‘like’ us: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics

FROM THE GREAT MIGRATION TO THE SYRIAN WAR

February 8, 2020 by Kenan Malik

Jacob Lawrence was one of the great painters of 20th century America. His Great Migration series is an extraordinary work both of art and social history, documenting the migration of African Americans from the South to the Northern cities. I have published the full set of 60 paintings over a series of six posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Helen Zughaib, a Lebanese-born American artist, has taken Lawrence’s series as a template for a new set of paintings on […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: america, art, Helen zughaib, jacob lawrence, painting, syria, the great migration

PANDEMICS THREATEN MORE THAN OUR HEALTH

February 3, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how responses to pandemics are shaped by more than medical needs, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on when Bonnie met Lozza.) It was published on 2 February 2020, under the headline ‘Locked-down Wuhan and why we always overplay the threat of the new’. ‘A major outbreak of novel, fatal epidemic disease can quickly be followed… by plagues of fear, panic, suspicion and stigma.’ So wrote the sociologist Philip Strong in […]

Categories: Politics, Science • Tags: coronavirus, culture of fear, ebola, epidemics, h1n1, pandemics, philip strong, quarantine, racism, sars, wuhan

FROM REFERENDUM TO BREXIT (WELL, SORT OF)

February 1, 2020 by Kenan Malik

So, farewell then, EU. Well, sort of. Almost four years ago, on the eve of the 2016 referendum , I wrote about why, whatever the result, the underlying issues would not be addressed: But, if the world will not end for Britain, neither will the key issues at the heart of the Brexit debate have been resolved – or even properly addressed. Hostility to the EU, not just in Britain, but throughout Europe, has been driven by frustrations about democracy and […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: brexit, british politics, immigration, labour party, left, populism, racism, working class

SUNDERLAND TO LONDON: THE GEOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL DIVISION

January 27, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the relationship between class, race and geography in Britain, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on antibiotics, global poverty and the broken market.) It was published on 26 January 2020, under the headline ‘No history, no languages… the end of humanities only deepens divides’. Sunderland University wants to become more ‘career-focused’. So it is to shut down all its language, politics and history courses and promote instead degrees that ‘align with […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: centre for towns, cities, elite, humanities, labour party, poverty, privilege, social mobility, sunderland university, towns, universities, white privilege, white working class, working class

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #66

January 25, 2020 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. . We’re banning facial recognition. We’re missing the point. Bruce Schneier, New York Times, 20 January 2020 Facial recognition is a technology that can be used to identify people without their knowledge or consent. It relies on the prevalence of cameras, which are becoming both more powerful and smaller, and machine learning technologies that can […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS ABOUT ROGER SCRUTON’S CONSERVATISM

January 20, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the Roger Scruton and his social philosophy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the conundrums of being a Liverpool supporter this season.) It was published on 19 January 2020, under the headline ‘The uncomfortable truths about Roger Scruton’s conservatism’. I first met Roger Scruton almost 20 years ago at a symposium in Sweden. I admired the eloquence with which he could talk about Kant and the elegance of his writing […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: conservatism, david goodhart, edmund burke, enoch powell, eric kaufmann, homosexuality, immigration, liberalism, prejudice, racism, roger scruton, salisbury review, social, trade unions, working class

DISASTER ALERT!

January 18, 2020 by Kenan Malik

Just a short note to say that I’ve had a meltdown on my email account. And in trying to sort it out, I’ve lost a number of recent emails. So, if you’ve emailed me over the past month or so, and not heard back, it may be that I no longer have your email. So, do try again. (It may be, of course, that I’ve just ignored you, but I’ll try not to do so the second time 😀) […]

Categories: Kenan Malik

INDIAN LESSONS FOR GLOBAL STRUGGLES

January 14, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the turmoil in India and its lessons for the rest of th world, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on conservative snowflakes.) It was published on 12 January 2020, under the headline ‘It’s tempting to see India as a place apart. But it offers lessons for us all’. It’s the ‘largest democracy in the world’. It’s also one of the most fragile, one in which dissent has often been curtailed and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: bjp, citizenship amendment act, congress party, hindu nationalism, hinduvta, india, populism

20 BOOKS FOR 2020

January 11, 2020 by Kenan Malik

20 books due in 2020, both fiction and non-fiction, that I’m looking forward to. Not books that I have read, so not (yet, anyway) recommendations, but books I would like to read. There are a dozen more I might have included, and many more that I have missed, but this is a start. . William Gibson, Agency Viking, January From the grand-daddy of cyberpunk, a dystopian thriller set in an alternative present where Hillary Clinton is in the White House […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: 2020, books

WHITENESS, CLASS AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

January 6, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the controversy over the funding of scholarship for white working class boys, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece onthe happiness industry.) It was published on 5 January 2020, under the headline‘Bursaries don’t help when it’s not their colour that thwarts these boys’. There is a scene in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in which one of the central characters, Saladin, finds himself incarcerated in a detention centre for illegal immigrants. Saladin […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: british politics, education, race, racism, white identity, white privilege, white working class

IMMIGRATION AND THE LEFT – A DEBATE

January 5, 2020 by Kenan Malik

I have been involved in a long debate on Twitter with the writer and activist Thomas Fazi, which began with his critique of my article on social conservatism and the working class and ended as a debate about immigration and the left. The debate consisted of very long threads from both of us (the four threads amount to more than 5000 words!), and inevitably was Twitterish in form and tone, peevish and crabby at times, but it got to the […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: blue labour, identity politics, immigration, labour party, left, national identity, nationalism, racism, social conservatism, thomas fazi, working class

ON STORIES AND THEIR AMBIGUITIES

December 30, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Milton, Phillip Pullman and the ambiguities of stories, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on strikes in France.) It was published on 29 December 2019, under the headline ‘From Milton to Pullman, the quest for truth is riddled with ambiguity’. ‘A poem is not a lecture; a story is not an argument. The way poems and stories work on our minds is not by logic, but by their capacity to […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Human • Tags: areopagitica, blake, christianity, his dark materials, human nature, john milton, paradise lost, philip pullman, religion, the fall

A YEAR OF PANDAEMONIUM

December 28, 2019 by Kenan Malik

Another year of Pandaemonium, and three lists to finish off the year: the most read posts in 2019, the most read posts published in 2019 (because most of most-read posts from this year are actually from previous years) and my favourite posts of the year. My thanks to all readers of, and contributors to, Pandaemonium. And most especially to all the Patrons. And best wishes to all for 2020. . Most read posts in 2019 . 1 What’s the problem […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

SOCIAL CONSERVATISM AND THE WORKING CLASS

December 23, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about social conservatism and the working class, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 152December 2019, under the headline ‘The idea that the British working class is socially conservative is a nonsense’. ‘It is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on identity & culture.’ So tweeted politics professor and TV pundit Matthew Goodwin on the morning of the Tory election victory as […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: british politics, conservatives, grunwick strike, identity politics, immigration, labour party, left, liberalism, matthew goodwin, metropolitan liberals, social conservatism, trust, working class