Debates

I was recently in Naples for a conference, a marvelous city that I like to think of as “the Italy of Italy.” In one of its countless souvenir shops, most …
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It is not without reason that advocacy for political utopias is often scorned, dismissed outright, or simply denounced as a manifestation of naïveté (or even infantilism). The argument typically boils …
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We should stop calling them climate deniers.

Because they’re not denying it; if they denied anthropogenic climate change, they wouldn’t be acting so feverishly to shut-up, actively reject, and blow …
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‘A successful paranoia might just as well seem to constitute the closure of science’.[i]

In psychoanalytic terms, denial negates reality, whereas delusion replaces it. In denial, the subject refuses to …
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Announced in 1947 by U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, The Marshall Plan was a massive program of financial assistance to help rebuild war-torn Europe, restore production, stabilize currencies, …
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This past spring I had the opportunity to see the blockbuster exhibition, Caravaggio 2025, at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The Italian painter, known for his use of dramatic lighting …
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In recent years, there has been much talk about the death of capitalism—whether that death is imminent, in process, or something that has already happened. In the latter category, we …
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The mind is not located, but enacted. Let me rephrase: you say hello to your neighbour, not out of kindness, but because he still hasn’t returned the carton of eggs …
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Edward Said ends his introduction to Orientalism with a plea for “unlearning”: “If [Orientalism] stimulates a new kind of dealing with the Orient, indeed if it eliminates the ‘Orient’ and …
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In the movie Blade Runner 2049, we see the bloodstained protagonist, Officer K, gazing at a giant hologram of his AI companion, JOI, who points at him and says, “You …
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