March 23, 2017
1929–2017
November 11, 2016
Just trust us. Our policies are healthy and good for you.
Disqualified
February 11, 2013
Must We Mean What We Say?
On Stanley Cavell
This was Cavell’s response to logical positivism: to demand that we only speak about what is absolutely true and false, that about that which we cannot speak with certainty, we must be silent, is to demand that we not speak at all—or else that we lie to ourselves about the ambiguity inherent in even the most carefully defined language.
Lions in Winter
The New York Public Library has announced a plan to remake its landmark building on 42nd Street. As Joshua Steiner, vice chairman of the board of trustees, put it in 2008, the renovation in many way represents the “further democratization” of the library. By contrast, a staff member with whom I spoke called the plan “the destruction of the research library.”
October 31, 2011
Can Occupy Wall Street eventually lead to a re-occupation of the fifty states by a citizenry with a new idea of itself?
The Politics of the Poor
February 26, 2010
Science, of course, doesn’t have an aesthetic—it can only be made to serve an aesthetic that comes from outside.
American Pastoral
January 13, 2009
There is a persistent critical narrative according to which Robinson’s characters are too good, barely capable of drama.
