A recent article in the April 29 edition of the New York Review of Books, "Editing Humanity's Future" by Natalie de Souza, awoke in me a very insistent interest in the topic of bioetics. Rather than begin with any of the books reviewed in de Souza's article, I took an interest in a considerably lighter... Continue Reading →
Whatever you say about Jonathan Franzen (and there's plenty to say, no small amount of it critical), you can't deny the man his insight. He's a fine writer, as this collection of republished essays proves; though they all originate in the 90s and very early 2000s, few come across as dated; the topics Franzen addresses... Continue Reading →
The notion of Victorian bourgeois society as sexually repressed weighs heavy on the general understanding modern society has of that by-gone time. Michel Foucault, in his History of Sexuality, seeks to dispell this unimaginative notion. Rather, he envisions the very notion of sexuality as a bourgeois invention, meant to negotiate between "power and knowledge," between... Continue Reading →
