Samuel Hayim Brody at the Boston Review:
Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige presents a three-act structure said to apply to all great magic tricks. First is the pledge: the magician presents something ordinary, though the audience suspects that it isn’t. Next is the turn: the magician makes this ordinary object do something extraordinary, like disappear. Finally, there’s the prestige: the truly astounding moment, as when the object reappears in an unexpected way.
Poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch, author of the recent book On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, doesn’t present himself as a magician. But there is no denying that he is a master rhetorician, putting his talents to work in repeated sleights of hand. The purpose of the book is to relieve its readers of the sense that there is anything respectable about the central topic of discussion. Judging by an unfortunate review from Michael Walzer that appeared in the Jewish Review of Books, which more or less thanks Kirsch for doing the reading so he doesn’t have to, On Settler Colonialism is already working its magic, and I am afraid that it will continue to provide this public disservice for years to come. Its ultimate goal: to make the idea of settler colonialism disappear.
More here.
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