Forty five years after the May ‘evenements’ in Paris I took my grandchildren to Euro-Disney for their half term holiday break. To bracket the most determined assault on the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ with the most extravagant expression of its triumph might seem wilfully perverse, at best a rueful acknowledgement that capitalism has succeeded, beyond our wildest … [Read more...] about May/June Blog – Living the Dream : a Letter from Paris
Phil's Blog
April Blog On Translating politics
ON TRANSLATING POLITICS For DNS What sounded fresh once may sound hackneyed later; what was once current may someday sound quaint. To seek the essence of such changes, as well as the equally constant changes in meaning, in the subjectivity of posterity rather than in the very life of language and its works, would mean - even allowing for the crudest psychologism - to … [Read more...] about April Blog On Translating politics
March Blog
Strange Intimacies : socialising the media or mediatising sociality? For the last six months I have been in almost daily contact with my editors at Lawrence Wishart and Five Leaves about matters arising from books of mine they are publishing. The relationship that has developed between us has been an intense, occasionally stressful, but ultimately very rewarding … [Read more...] about March Blog
February Blog
Making bread out of circuses : Some Lenten reflections on Carnival capitalism and Socialist sacrifice in the Age of Austerity I recently got an invitation to a party organised by Common Knowledge, a co-operative of left wing artists and designers who are involved in various kinds of community activity in East London. It was billed as a Mardi Gras Masquerade and in case … [Read more...] about February Blog
January Blog
New Year Graphologies : I grew up with comics, but when I became a teenager I put them away as one does childish things. It was not until I met my second wife and began travelling regularly to Paris and Brussels to accompany her on trips to visit members of her family, that I had occasion to revisit a genre which in the meantime had grown up into a sophisticated art form. I … [Read more...] about January Blog