Author Archives: Kenan Malik

DIVIDED BRAIN, DIVIDED WORLD?

February 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In November the RSA in London held a workshop to discuss Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and his Emissary. The RSA has now published Divided Brain Divided World, a report of that workshop, together with a long conversation between McGilchrist and Jonathan Rowson, Director of the RSA’s Social Brain Centre. McGilchrist’s book deals with the social, political and philosophical implications of the lateralisation of the brain, that is, its division into two hemispheres, left and right. The difference between the two […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: human agency, iain mcgilchrist, neuroscience, ray tallis, reason

THE MAKING OF THE IDEA OF RACE

February 17, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In my last post, on The Enlightenment’s “Race Problem”, I questioned the idea that the modern roots of the idea of race lie in the Enlightenment. The relationship between race and the Enlightenment is, I argued, far more complex than much contemporary discussion allows for. It was the transformation of Enlightenment attitudes through the course of the nineteenth century that helped mutate the eighteenth century discussion of human variety into the nineteenth century obsession with racial difference. This is the […]

Categories: History, Race & Immigration, Science & Technology • Tags: cuvier, enlightenment, herder, positivism, race, racial science, romanticism, samuel morton, thomas huxley

ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT’S ‘RACE PROBLEM’

February 13, 2013 by Kenan Malik

In an essay this week in New York Times, the philosopher Justin Smith tells the story of Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former slave who defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony, written in Latin and entitled On the Impassivity of the Human Mind. A dedicatory letter was attached to the dissertation from the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Johannes Gottfried Kraus, who, Smith observes, ‘praised the “natural genius” of Africa, its […]

Categories: History, Race & Immigration, Science & Technology • Tags: blumenbach, buffon, enlightenment, hume, linnaeus, locke, race, racial categories, racial science

ORIENTAL ENLIGHTENMENT

February 10, 2013 by Kenan Malik

A book that I wish I had read many years ago. JJ Clarke’s Oriental Enlightenment is a superb study of ‘The encounter between Asian and Western thought’, as the subtitle puts it. It is primarily a historical study of Western perceptions of Chinese and Indian cultures and philosophies. Any exploration of the role of ‘Eastern’ thought in the Western intellectual tradition necessarily lies in the shadow of Edward Said’s 1978 work Orientalism, which has effectively set the terms of the […]

Categories: History • Tags: china, edward said, history of ideas, india, modernity, orientalism

DIVERSITY, THE MARKET AND ARTISTIC FREE EXPRESSION

February 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I took part last week in a conference on artistic free expression called ‘Taking the Offensive’ organized by Index on Censorship. It was the culmination of a long project through which Index on Censorship has sought both to raise awareness of threats to artistic free expression and to clarify responses. Back in July 2011 Index on Censorship published, as part of this project, a report, Beyond Belief – Theatre, Freedom of Expression and Public Order. Taking as its starting point the controversies surrounding Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Multiculturalism • Tags: behzti, cultural policy, free speech, gurpreet kaur bhatti, liberties, multiculturalism, rushdie affair, social inclusion, the satanic verses

WHY I AM AN ATHEIST – THE VIDEO

February 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

. This is a video of a conversation I had with the sociologist and broadcaster Laurie Taylor on ‘Why I am an atheist’. It was one in a ‘daisy chain’ of discussions on belief organized by 5×15 at the Wellcome Collection in London in December. The daisy chain featured, as well as Laurie Taylor and myself, Laurie’s son Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA (and a fellow-panelist of mine on The Moral Maze), Nick Spencer, director of research at the religious think tank Theos, and Linda Woodhead, Professor of […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, christianity, debates, laurie taylor, linda woodhead, matthew taylor, nick spencer, religion, religious freedom, talks, theos

GERALD SCARFE, ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DANISH CARTOONS

January 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

How should we respond to the controversy over the Gerald Scarfe cartoon? Last Sunday – Holocaust Memorial Day – the Sunday Times published a cartoon by Scarfe, its regular cartoonist, depicting the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with blood-red coloured cement, in which were trapped Palestinians. The cartoon instantly created international outrage. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has complained to the Press Complaints Commission, denounced the cartoon as ‘shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel […]

Categories: Free Speech • Tags: anti-semitism, danish cartoons, free speech, gerald scarce, israel, liberal hypocrisy, offence, racism

THE WEARY BLUES GO FORTH

January 27, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Last month, in The Weary Blues, I set out my 20 favourite blues tracks, mainly from the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, the two traditional homes of the blues. Over the past half century the blues have travelled well beyond their origins and become anything but traditional. So here is a brief attempt to trace that journey. As ever, this is a personal, eclectic, even eccentric collection. There are 20 tracks split into three groups. The first group comprise singers whose […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, mali, music, world music

ON GAY MARRIAGE, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND WILD HYSTERIA

January 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The European Court of Human Rights ruling this week on four cases of conflict over religious rights, and the continuing controversy in Britain, France and elsewhere on proposals to legalize gay marriage, shows the ongoing battle over how we should define religious freedom. I wrote a long post on this question last year, trying to establish some fundamental ground rules from first principles. Here I want to address one issue that has become prominent in recent weeks: the claim by […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: catholicism, christianity, cristina odone, equality, gay rights, religion, religious freedom

MULTICULTURALISM: THE INTERVIEW

January 10, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I recently gave an interview for the Open University course on ‘Why is religion controversial?’. The interview is actually not about religion but about multiculturalism. It is somewhat oddly edited in places (a number of times, for instance, part of the answer to one question interpolated into the answer to another in a way that seems confusing), but still, I hope, it makes sense. Here anyway is the interview. Check out also my Milton K Wong lecture that I gave in Vancouver last […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: multiculturalism, talks

TWENTY BOOKS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

January 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

One of the pleasures of the New Year lies in the anticipation of new reading, of all the books that one can look forward to in the coming months. So here’s a list of 20 forthcoming books that have caught my eye. It is, as all such lists tend to be, somewhat arbitrary. I could probably have created several such lists with no titles in common between them. There are many books not here that I certainly look forward to […]

Categories: Culture & Books

ON DEMOCRACY AS A GOOD

January 3, 2013 by Kenan Malik

If 2011 brought the promise of democracy to the Arab world, in 2012 democratic change appeared to founder on political reality. In Egypt, democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi has tried to gather into his own hands powers far greater that that held previously by Hosni Mubarak, and is railroading through a constitution that many fear will undermine the gains of the revolution. In Libya and Tunisia Islamist-influenced governments are promoting laws restricting rights, constraining speech, and maintaining social inequality. In […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: arab spring, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, liberties, western policy

HAPPY NEW YEAR WITH TEN OF MY BEST FROM THE OLD YEAR

December 31, 2012 by Kenan Malik

…According to you, that is. Here are the ten most popular posts on Pandaemonium from 2012. One, ‘Rethinking the idea of “Christian Europe”‘, is actually from 2011 but was sufficiently read this year to make it on to this list: 1 The myths of Muslim rage 2 To name the unnameable 3 What is wrong with multiculturalism? 4 Who needs God? 5 Nietzsche, nihilism and the death of God 6 Beyond the sacred 7 Abortion, infanticide, humanity, free speech 8 […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE WEARY BLUES

December 27, 2012 by Kenan Malik

. I have lately been re-reading a lot of Langston Hughes, one of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance. I had forgotten how much I liked his poem ‘The Weary Blues’: . Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway. . . . He did a lazy […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, langston hughes, music

AN ECCLESIASTICAL GEM SOAKED IN BLOOD & HISTORY

December 24, 2012 by Kenan Malik

The most historic church in London. It is a big claim to make; after all, historic churches are to London almost as skyscrapers are to New York. And particularly so since it is a claim about a church of which I had never even heard, let alone visited, until last month. Yet the very fabric of St Etheldreda’s Church in Ely Place is soaked through with political and ecclesiastical history. It is the oldest Catholic building in England (though some […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Photos • Tags: christianity, english history, reformation, religious freedom