1. We don’t want to be heroes, even for one day
We are not heroes. We do not want to be fallen martyrs. All this war imagery makes us very uncomfortable. It distract people from the reality. We are ordinary people who have chosen to become health workers and carers. We are professionals and highly trained. All we want is to be given the tools we need to do our job properly, to look after people in a safe environments.… Read the rest
Published on line by Compass Wednesday June 24 2020
This essay looks at a range of public, personal and governmental responses to the pandemic for what it tells us about the kind of society and culture we live in. Drawing on insights from anthropology and psychoanalysis a model of risk perception is outlined and applied to understanding the forms of social solidarity which have been invoked by the government’s confused and often contradictory public health messaging.… Read the rest
There must be some way out of here
The title of this discussion might at first sight appear to be a plea for some kind of radical escapology. We are in a mess, how do we get out of it? There are currently a number of escapisms on offer on the Left. An escape into the past via nostalgic evocations of a world of working class community support which has been lost .… Read the rest
On Mindfulness [i]
We are living through a conjuncture which almost defies conjunctural analysis, where politics are taking an increasingly toxic turn and we are indeed entering uncharted waters. Against this background, the propagandists of neo-liberalism urge us to cultivate ‘resilience’ and ‘mindfulness’ as a way of seizing and surviving the present moment. Mindfulness in particular has been popularised as a kind of do-it-yourself therapy, a way of promoting well being by enabling people suffering from anxiety or depression to become more aware of internal mental states and their relation to external circumstances.… Read the rest
Today we are all too familiar with the two cultures of cartography, belonging to the worlds of science and art . Digital mapping technologies produce ever more precise and dramatic visualisations of big quantitative data sets generated by the procedural methodologies of natural and social science. The map’s power to abstract and totalise has never been greater, or more accessible.… Read the rest
This is the text of a talk given to a conference in Belgrade on ‘Dialoguing between the Posts 2.0’ in June 2019. I am grateful to Spela Zorko and Sanja Petovska for inviting me and for being such convivial hosts.
Introduction
I am delighted to have been invited to this conference and to have participated in so many interesting discussions, if only because it has taken me out of my current discomfort zone which is the madness of Brexit and the fact that our next Prime Minister is likely to be an unreconstructed member of the political establishment who still thinks Britain is a providential island surrounded on all sides by a sea of foreign disinformation about its future dealings with the world. … Read the rest
This piece was written for Livingmaps Review and appeared in section of the journal entitled News From Point Nemo. This is a geographical term denoting the most isolated and inaccessible points in the globe. As the journal’s editor at large, I have used this occasion to explore cartographic and other issues which arise from my travels, in this case to Australia and Japan.… Read the rest
SOME UNSEASONAL THOUGHTS ON TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY
This year I am giving a Brexit Advent Calendar to those of my friends who voted to Leave because they thought it would de-stabilise the political class, liberate us from the bureaucratic toils of Brussels and open up the road to socialism in our small island state. The online calendar depicts the Houses of Parliament as a gothic ruin, and each day as you prise open one its shuttered windows you are told to expect one of the Brexiteers suitably dressed for the occasion.… Read the rest
Near Views from Afar
Schoolboys of my generation learnt one thing that stuck in our minds about San Francisco : earthquakes. The frequent earthquakes which devastated large parts of the city had something to do with the San Andreas fault and meant inhabitants went about in daily dread of the world collapsing about their ears. Later, watching the eponymous Hollywood movie featuring the great 1906 quake plus Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy, confirmed this impression of a city living dangerously, on borrowed time, yet with a magical capacity to renew itself : at the end of the film the ruins dissolve into a modern rebuilt urban landscape.… Read the rest
In the age of Instagram and Facebook, when people are constantly ‘updating their status’, and keeping family and friends ‘in the loop’ about the smallest detail of their everyday lives, a Xmas blog looking back and reflecting on the year’s events, both personal and political, must seem either redundant or an act of self indulgence, along with too many mince pies.… Read the rest
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