“You can challenge the protests, poster by poster, sticker by sticker, meeting by meeting.” Don’t worry, my university’s management already has this covered: ripping down posters, raiding union offices, calling cops and bailiffs on their own students.

Derrida in an interview (when asked why he has never written on Beckett): “[Beckett] is an author to whom I feel very close, or to whom I would like to feel myself very close; but also too close. Precisely because of this proximity, it is too hard for me, too easy and too hard.+

Me, explaining parataxis to undergrads: “It’s the narrative and grammatical structure of the Old Testament: ‘and…’, ‘begat…’ etc. Or, you know, like a child narrating what they did on holiday. ‘And then we went on the dodgems. It was fun. And then…’.”

Nice to see this at National Gallery of Canada. Face-out very possibly instigated by this book’s dedicatee, et famille.

After the riots, Keir Starmer should tell us the truth about our country. This is what he should say, and why he won't say it. This week’s column theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

“There’s a coherence about Irish culture that the British lack, in a sense.” Give me strength… It’s great to see brilliant (white) Irish writers, editors and publishers (including friends and colleagues of mine) talked up here. But that is one unfortunate quote to finish on.

RIP Nell McCafferty. She was not the only feminist in Ireland when I was growing up, nor the only gay person in public life. But it sometimes seemed she was a lone voice, and certainly the most fearless and funniest. irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/0…

My dad never owned a car or had a driver’s license. But once (it must have been the 1950s or 60s) on urgent business for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, he drove from Dublin to Cork without much of a clue what he was doing. (In fairness, he may have met a tractor or two.)

On the morning of November 19, 2005, U.S. Marines killed 24 people in Haditha, Iraq. They also recorded the aftermath of their actions. See the photographs, obtained by In the Dark, which the military tried to keep from the public for years. newyorker.com/podcast/in-the…

Subscribe and pre-order now, and you might get a copy of ESSAYISM TRILOGY in which, while signing 1000 of them, my signature hasn't yet declined from careless scrawl to serious evidence of neurological issues.

We launched a new series on fact-checking minor morsels of intellectual history. I kick things off with a story about my dear friend Klaus and a rumor circulating at a Berlin party: that Hegel played a part in founding American Spirit cigarettes. cabinetmagazine.org/kiosk/dukes_hu…

For The New York Times, I wrote about Vigdis Hjorth’s 2001 novel “If Only”, newly translated by Charlotte Barslund and published by Verso Books nytimes.com/2024/08/29/boo…

now i dont know if any of u are territory charting buffs

That’s either a really short interior designer or a very “Princess and the Pea” style bed. (Imagining how this sort of behaviour would play among my own students.)

Today, as the Grenfell Tower Inquiry publishes its final report, we reflect on common refrains that echoed throughout the inquiry when members of the organisations considered jointly responsible for the Grenfell Tower fire were asked about the tower block’s management and