Author Archives: Kenan Malik

WORDS AND BEING

December 16, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Here are two extracts from two very different writers exploring their relationship with language. Both begin with a discussion of the art of translation, but both develop into a much deeper meditation on the nature of language itself, and on the craft of writing. The first extract is from an essay by the writer and critic John Berger, in which he argues that a language cannot be thought of as merely a stock of words or phrases but is rather a […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Language • Tags: elif shafak, john berger, language, translation

LIGHT INFUSION

December 13, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The slideshow above is of photos from Light Infusion, my photography site. All the photos there are available as prints (very handy for Christmas…). And below are some of my favourite photos from 2014, some of which I have already published on Pandaemonium. My images of New York I published over three posts, Darkness falls on Manhattan, On the High Line, day and night and The Big Apple in black and white. The photos of London at sunset were taken from […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: dungeness, london, new york, photos, romney marshes

FREE SPEECH AND ITS DISCONTENTS

December 10, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my debate with Anshuman Mondal on free speech, here are three videos and an audio clip in which I explore some of the issues, particularly in the context of the Rushdie affair. The first is a short film I made for Faculti, the academic video site, about my book From Fatwa to Jihad. The second is a debate about the Rushdie Affair that I had with Tariq Modood on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week in […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: broadcasts, free speech, hanif kureishi, rushdie affair, tariq modood

WRITING & READING, DEMOCRACY & DESPOTISM

December 7, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Two writers, two talks, two beautifully-expressed arguments about the writer and his or her responsibilities, to the reader, to the craft, to the world. The first is a talk that Philip Pullman gave at the World Humanist Congress in Oxford this summer. I was lucky enough to be in the Sheldonian Theatre to listen to it, a talk that was, as so few are, thoughtful, provocative, illuminating and inspiring all at the same time. It has been republished in the […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: books, literature, philip pullman, ursula le guin

DO I WANT PEOPLE TO SHUT UP?

December 5, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Anshuman Mondal, a lecturer in English at Brunel University, recently published an article on the academic website The Conversation criticising arguments for free speech. Advocates of free speech, of which I was a key specimen, were, Mondal claimed, trying to ‘shut up’ those who disagreed with them: By advocating blind adherence to the principle of free speech instead of accepting the ethical responsibilities attendant upon free speech, people like… Malik undermine the moral agency on which freedom rests. By dismissing other […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anshuman mondal, behzti, censorship, exhibit b, free speech, morality, the satanic verses

REVIEWING THE QUEST

December 2, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a round-up of the latest reviews of The Quest for a Moral Compass. On my Books page are all the reviews so far. You can buy the book from the Pandaemonium bookshop in Britain and the USA. Jonathan Israel New Humanist, Winter 2014 There could be no more daunting intellectual task than setting out to write a history of moral thought from the ancient Greeks until now. Yet there is no neater way of combining philosophy, religion, intellectual […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: christianity, enlightenment, history of moral thought, islam, jonathan israel, kenan malik's books, marxism, morality, radical enlightenment, religion

FROM AN UNEXPECTED PERSPECTIVE

November 30, 2014 by Kenan Malik

‘The modern city’, Alexander Rodchenko wrote, ‘has changed the psychology of the traditional perception to a great extent. It seems as if only a camera is able to illustrate modern life.’ There are few artists who have had a greater impact on modern photography than Rodchenko. Yet these days, at least in public consciousness, his name barely elicits a flicker of recognition. Born in St Petersburg in1891, Rodchenko was one of the founders of Constructivism and a key figure of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Photos • Tags: constructivism, modernism, photography, rodchenko, soviet union

WHITE VAN MAN AND CAR CRASH POLITICS

November 28, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the furore created in Britain by Emily Thornburn’s tweet, and what it tells us about British politics. Published under the headline ‘A Collision with “White Van Man”‘, here are the opening paragraphs. You can read the full version in the INYT. Rarely can such an unremarkable photo have such heavy political repercussions. Last Thursday, a senior Labour Party member of Parliament, Emily Thornberry, tweeted a photo of a house […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: british politics, labour party, racism, ukip, working class

TALKING MORALITY

November 24, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was a guest last week on Neil Denny’s Little Atoms show on Resonance FM, talking about the history of morality. Also on the show was Rebecca Goldstein, author of the wonderful Plato at the Googleplex, discussing Plato and his relevance. Unfortunately the two interviews were recorded separately, so we were not able to discuss issues on air. Nevertheless it was an honour to find myself on the same show. I have also uploaded here videos of a couple of […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: death of god, history of moral thought, morality, talks

GERMANY, BRITAIN AND THE ANGEL OF HISTORY

November 22, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on British perceptions of German history published last month in the International New York Times under the headline ‘Germany’s History Lesson for Britain’. Ernst Barlach was one of Germany’s great Expressionist artists of the early 20th century. A virulent nationalist in the run-up to World War I, Barlach found that his experience of the Western Front stripped him of his jingoism. Much of his subsequent work explored the sorrow and suffering […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books, History, International • Tags: britain, britishness, ernst barlach, germany, neil Macgregor

THE STRANGE NEW LANDSCAPE OF SCOTLAND

November 19, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Ken MacLeod is a Scottish science fiction writer, blogger and ‘habitual Labour voter’. He has set a number of his novels in a future, independent Scotland, but campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the recent independence referendum. I am delighted that he has written an essay for Pandaemonium, based on a recent talk for BBC Radio 4’s World This Weekend, about the strangeness of the post-referendum political landscape in Scotland. Ken MacLeod The strange new landscape of Scotland Scotland is in a […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: labour party, left, scottish independence, snp

NOBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLE I’VE SEEN

November 16, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time is one of the great twentieth century musical reflections on war and suffering, exploring similar kinds of themes to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and György Ligeti’s Requiem. Into the score Tippett wove five traditional spirituals – Steal Away, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve See, Go Down Moses, O By and By and Deep River. So here, at the end of a week in which there has […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: first world war, gospel, michael tippett, music, paul robeson, war

ON THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER

November 13, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In October 1985, four members of the Palestinian Liberation Front seized a cruise liner, the Achille Lauro, in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Egypt. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, the hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then held in Israeli prisons. They failed to achieve their demands. But, in a vicious and seemingly inexplicable act, the hijackers murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a retired, wheelchair-bound Jewish-American businessman, shooting him in the forehead and chest, then forcing the ship’s barber […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: anti-semitism, free speech, islam, israel, john adams, music, nakba, opera, palestine, salman rushdie, terrorism, the death of klinghoffer, the satanic verses

THE WRONG KIND OF PANIC

November 10, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my preface to the book on European Populism and Winning the Immigration Debate, here is the talk I gave to the discussion about populism at the European Parliament last week, organised by the European Liberal Forum and Fores. The context of this discussion is not just the rise of groups such UKIP in Britain, the Front National in France, the Sweden Democrats, but also the panic about it within mainstream circles. And if there is one […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, europe, immigration, left, populism, racism, ukip, working class

THE BIG APPLE IN BLACK AND WHITE

November 8, 2014 by Kenan Malik

There are few cities that give themselves more to black and white photography than New York. So, in this third and final selection of New York photos – the previous sets were of New York at night and the view from the High Line – here is the Big Apple in black and white. There are more photos on my photographic website Light Infusion (from where you can also buy prints), and on Flickr and 500px.

Categories: Photos • Tags: new york, usa