Category Archives: Philosophy & Ethics

SONGS OF LOVE AND HEARTBREAK

February 14, 2020 by Kenan Malik

For Valentine’s Day, BBC Radio 6 challenged people to make a mixtape of their six favourite love songs. Of course, I couldn’t resist, though it was a task reducing the list down to six. I just about managed it, though there are dozens of others I might included – from Aretha Franklin to Radiohead, from Bob Marley to Lauryn Hill. And just to add a twist, I’ve added six of favourite heartbreak songs, too. And I’m sure nobody else agrees […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: music

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

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

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

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

AN OUTRAGE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

December 2, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the EU’s outsourced migration controls as the new imperialism, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on easy answers in the wake of the London Bridge attack.) It was published on 1 December 2019, under the headline ‘When refugees in Libya are being starved, Europe’s plan is working’. A hospital that finds its patients so burdensome that it denies them medical care. A homeless hostel that turfs its residents out on the […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: africa, european union, immigration, immigration policy, janjaweed, khartoum process, libya, niger, refugees, sudan, unhcr

VAR, TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN JUDGMENT

November 18, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on what VAR tells us about our relationship to technology, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 17 November 2019, under the headline ‘Technology will never replace human judgment. Look at football…’ Even if you can’t tell your offside from your elbow (in the face), you’ve probably heard of VAR. The video assistant referee has been introduced into top-level football to cut out errors by referees. At every Premier League game, a VAR referee watches TV feeds of […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science, Sport • Tags: ai, football, human judgment, technology, var

TO IMAGINE, TO HOPE, TO TRANSCEND, TO TRANSFORM

November 11, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the Dhaka Lit Fest, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on a new survey of English dialects.) It was published on 20 October 2019, under the headline ‘Literary festivals are not a luxury, a bauble for the middle classes’. Sadarghat is not a place for the faint-hearted. The river port of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, it’s a microcosm of the city itself – in your face, bursting with life, tumultuous […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: bangladesh, bangladesh war of liberation, daniel baremboim, dhaka, dhaka lit fest, freedom struggles, gaza, kazi anis ahmed, louis kahn

FAILING TO SEE THE DEEPER CAUSES OF SOCIAL TRAGEDIES

November 4, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the shallowness of public debates about social tragedies, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 November 2019, under the headline ‘From Grenfell to migrant deaths, we fail to see the deeper causes of tragedy’ The 72 people killed in the Grenfell Tower fire. The 39 migrants who died in a shipping container left in a car park in Purfleet, Essex. Little may seem to connect these two dreadful events except the sense of horror we […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: dany contton, eh carr, fbu, firefighters, flammable cladding, grenfell tower, hein de haas, human traffickers, immigration controls, matt wrack, migrant deaths, people smugglers, purfleet, social tragedies

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

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

THE REAL UNDESIRABLES ARE NOT ON THE STREETS

August 12, 2019 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, and posting little new material on Pandaemonium, I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a a short piece on homelessness and official attitudes and policies, first published on 7 July 2019. None are so blind as those who would blind others. Mark Field, the Foreign Office minister suspended for grabbing a protester by the throat, has, according to leaked […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: austerity, british politics, homelessness, london, mark field, rough sleeping

THE NECESSITY OF POETRY

August 10, 2019 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, and posting little new material on Pandaemonium, I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a a short piece on the need for poetry, first published on 12 May 2019, after the announcement of Simon Armitage as the new Poet Laureate. Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: george szirtes, howard nemerov, mean alexander, poetry, simon armitage

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