The Political Economy of Memory
Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide I read this book for my treatment of Wiesel and it gave me plenty of perspectives, arguments and insights. The question of the…
Category: Power and Ideology
Books To Read before We Die
Recently, I gave a bibliophilic friend the new book by James Mustich, 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List. It is a delight to peruse the tome, as the author and his…
Why Do They Come to Hinder Us?
Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals (La Trahison des Clercs) [1927] Julien Benda’s Treason of the Intellectuals can be read as a gloss on the Dreyfus Affair. In this polemic against intellectuals who have…
Remembering Is Not Enough
Hilene Flanzbaum, The Americanization of the Holocaust The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 The following note is from summer 1999 when I was reworking my dissertation to what would become my first book, Elie Wiesel…
A U.S. American Voice, Laotian Voices
Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War (first published in 1972) If our country had decency, at the death of Fred Branfman there would have been coverage, interviews, retrospectives,…
To Have Been Exiled by Exiles
I was rereading Edward Said’s Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, which is a great collection of essays on literature and culture with exploration of the experiences of dislocation, exile, migration, and empire as well…
Our Only Salvation Lies in Words: On Arenas’s Before Night Falls
All dictatorships are sexually repressive and anti-life. All affirmations of life are diametrically opposed to dogmatic regimes. It was logical for Fidel Castro to persecute us, not to let us fuck, and to try to…
Giving No Peace to Those in the Country Who Are Violating All the Laws of Truth
She represented the honor and conscience of Russia, and probably nobody will ever know the source of her fanatical courage and love of the work she was doing. — Liza Umarova, Chechen singer Colleagues helped…
Three Views: Lévy, Golan, Chomsky
1. Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote a “Love Letter to Israel in Seventy Lines,” published in The Tablet under 70 REASONS TO CELEBRATE ISRAEL. He is a philosopher who lives in Paris, France. Here are a…
Who Is Learning from History?
1. Oscar Romero’s Letter San Salvador February 17, 1980 His Excellency The President of the United States Mr. Jimmy Carter Dear Mr. President: In the last few days, news has appeared in the national press…