This is a section where we will discuss the problem of politics understood in broad terms. This will include, of course, discussions of politics parties, elections, policy matters, and the like. But it can also include discussions of how political questions are imbedded in realms of our lives we rarely think of as politically situated, and can touch on everything from problems we encounter in our everyday lives to how power, knowledge, and desire relate to one another in theoretical, methodological, and practical terms.
By Mark McConaghy
Martin Scorsese’s latest film is a 3 hour montage of relentless sex, drugs, debauchery, and rampant disregard for the victims of financial predation. So is this supposed to be a critique of Wall Street or a glorification of it? I weigh in on the controversy surrounding the film.
Read more "Reading Excess: On Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street"By Mark McConaghy
Despite our technological and material mastery over the world, why does melancholy still persist?
Read more "On Sadness (Part 1)"In this essay, Mark McConaghy asks the question: what is happiness in this day and age of bourgeois normalcy? Is being happy possible? And should it be considered the very point of existence itself? The new semester is upon us and the old familiar rhythms have returned. For those readers of ours who have worked […]
Read more "On Happiness"By Mark McConaghy In part one of this series, I asked the question: why read literature in this day and age? What can literature actually do to better humanity? While intellectuals, professors, and graduate students may feel that an answer to such a question is readily apparent- literature Enlightens! Enthralls! Nurtures our Soul!- I have […]
Read more "Why Read Literature Part 2: We Still Need Scalpels"By Sean Callaghan The Problem What happens after the revolution? How does a people move from their desire to overthrow a regime to the concrete practice of governing according to democratic principles, and what exactly are these principles? These are the questions I keep asking myself while watching the political drama unfold in Egypt. Before […]
Read more "Opinion: The Fate of Demo- cracy in Egypt"by Sean Callaghan The Screw It Principle We have gone on at some length on this website about the problems we face today in our economic, social, cultural, political spheres, etc. A few posts ago Mark McConaghy made the astute observation that the fundamental problem tying all our contemporary failures together is simply the absence […]
Read more "Lego Utopia – Building Block 1: Being"By Mark McConaghy For the last couple of years we have heard nothing but glowing news reports about Brazil’s rapid economic growth. This was South America’s answer to China- a regional dominant that was growing into a global economic powerhouse, replete with double digit GDP expansion and a sky rocketing demand for commodities of all […]
Read more "A Politics Without a Name"By Mark McConaghy Hundreds of news pundits and editorial columnists declared outrage last week over the revelation that the US government’s National Security Agency has direct access to the servers of the world’s largest internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Skype, Apple, and Microsoft. The government can monitor and track all online communication, even if it is […]
Read more "The Scandal We Knew All Along"By Mark McConaghy I will start by stating an obvious but important fact: the irony of doing political or creative work is that, above all else, one must have the time to engage in it. If you want to go out and raise awareness about an issue, either online or through old fashioned door knocking, […]
Read more "Everything is Fine: Rob Ford and Existential Exhaustion"By Mark McConaghy The Scene Monday Night. 7:30 pm. The pub in the tony part of Toronto, the neighborhood known as Rosedale, was packed with people young and old. They were there to cheer on the Toronto Maple Leafs in a deciding game 7 in their playoff series against the Boston Bruins. After having been […]
Read more "On Watching Game 7 in Toronto"
The 14th Floor 