Phil's Blog

December Blog

December 9, 2012 by philco

A Xmas story about two films. Recently I visited an exhibition of work by Humphrey Jennings, whose book, Pandaemonium, was a key inspiration for Danny Boyle’s Isle of Wonder’s Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. Jennings was an interesting blend of Romantic Marxist and surrealist, who played a leading role in the British film documentary movement in the 1930’s … [Read more...] about December Blog

November blog

November 3, 2012 by philco

To blog or not to blog that was the question. Is it always nobler in the mind to keep one’s thoughts to oneself rather than complain about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Blogging often seems to have become just another excuse for grumbling, although as a medium for sharing grievances is obviously has its uses. Blogs are the parish pumps of cyberspace, where gossip … [Read more...] about November blog

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Phil Cohen Funeral
December 1, 2024
Sadly Phil Cohen died on November 7th 2024. Funeral details and a link to his obituary can be found here...
Phil Cohen Obituary
November 27, 2024
Phil Cohen 1943-2024 Professor Phil Cohen, radical activist, cultural theorist, memoirist, poet and urban ethnographer, has died aged 81. ‘When I first met Phil Cohen,’ recalls Dr Toby Butler, ‘he was professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London. Fizzing with ideas, he drew together an astonishing array of artists, academics and policy […]
WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET : A DOUBLE TAKE ON THE UK ELECTION 2024
July 15, 2024
Note: These two short pieces written after the June 4th election result , are extracted from a collection of essays , Studies in the Grey Zone, due to be published by eyeglass books in October. Take One: One Nation Labourism and the Great Moving Right Show The question of just how and from where, and […]
Waypoints 2
March 27, 2024
Publication date: first quarter of 2025. New introduction by Andrew Calcutt This new book brings together Phil Cohen’s most recent writing and spans the period from the Covid 19 pandemic to the ongoing wars in the Ukraine and Gaza. Like the pieces in the first Waypoints volume, these essays are occasional in that they were […]
Living Maps : towards a poetry made by all
December 24, 2023
Looking back on the first ten years of Livingmaps Network Every project has its founding myth , a story about its origins in which the cold rational prose of ‘aims and objectives’ melts into the thicker air of an auto-poetics. The risk is that in the process starting points become end points, and the […]
ANTISEMIT-ORIENTAL- ZION-ISMS
December 23, 2023
The Triple Misalliance I An extract from‘Studies in thr Grey Zone; Waypoints Vol 2 to be published by eyglass books at Easter 2024 .Introduction One of the many fallouts from the current horrific conflict in Palestine/Israel is the way sections of the Hard Left have advanced an apologetics for the atrocities committed by Hamas, while […]