Justin E. H. Smith is an American essayist, journalist, and satirist based in Montreal. He doesn't want to write satire, but, as Juvenal said, the world leaves him no choice. He is a regular contributor to Counterpunch, and has written for numerous other online publications, including N+1. His work has been linked or cited in the online editions of the Guardian, the Atlantic Monthly, the Stranger, the Washington Post, and (probably a mistake) the National Review. His archive, www.jehsmith.com, brings together writing of his available on the Internet. Quite apart from all this, Smith is also a professor of philosophy and a specialist on the life and work of G. W. Leibniz. To see his academic profile, please visit www.jehsmith.com/philosophy. Email: [email protected]
The Qyzyk Nomads Justin. E. H. Smith It was not much in the way of pillow talk, but after a night like the one we’d just spent, nothing could surprise me. “Do you want to hear a folk tale?” Tanya asked. “I heard it when I was running a polyclinic in Nebit-Dag a few years…
The Lomi-Ek Justin E. H. Smith To the great benefit of scholarship, an electronic version has finally been made available of Sir Thomas Fudge’s 1594 translation of the 15th-century Venetian explorer Girolamo Policarpo’s travel report on his detour north of the Silk Road. Having gone looking for the lost Christian kingdom of Prester John, he…
The YamkutJustin E. H. Smith We all know the deer: a beast formed of grace and terror. She is graceful because all the visible terror, at being shot, at being torn by claws, is concentrated in the eyes alone; she is terrified, in her eyes and in her soul (which is invisible), because the world…
Justin E. H. Smith Among Aral-Ultaic linguists, it is widely presumed that no single English word, or any word of any other known language, can adequately translate the Yuktun word nâk. It may denote, depending on context, reindeer lichen (Cladina rangiferina), an Arctic hare (Lepus arcticus), an adult Yuktun woman, a Russian, something resembling…
A Note on Sex and Violence Justin E. H. Smith Somewhere, and I don’t remember where, Arthur Danto describes the power ‘bad words’ have of ‘bleeding out’ of any quotation marks within which one might hope to contain them. Thus in the philosophy of language it has been known for some time that if John…
Justin E. H. Smith In The World Viewed, Stanley Cavell wryly comments that it was not until he reached adulthood that he learned “where movies come from.” As it happens, movies come from the same place I do: California. Now as an answer to the question of origins, this is hardly satisfying. “California,” as a…
Justin E. H. Smith (For an extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing, please visit www.jehsmith.com) Many of us in the 3QD community have witnessed a recent assault on our inboxes from Australians with big ideas. It seems the land down under plays host to a vast network of retired insurance adjustors, used-car salesmen, accounts payable…
Justin E. H. Smith What could be more self-indulgent than to recount where one was on September 11? As if other people were not somewhere. As if being anywhere at all on the planet automatically made one a survivor. I survived September 11, as it happens, in an internet café in Berlin packed with smirking…
Justin E. H. Smith [An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing can be found at www.jehsmith.com] I would probably not consider myself in any position to hold forth on God, were talk of this sort not all the rage in Hollywood, and were I not such a slave to trickle-down fashion. But I remain an…
Justin E. H. Smith [An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing may be found at www.jehsmith.com] An eighth-grade English textbook published in Bucharest in 1978 begins with an inspiring hortation from President Nicolae Ceasescu: “Let you learn, learn and learn,” he beseeches the pupils. “Let you explore, explore and work. Let you relate tightly education…
Justin E. H. Smith [An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing can be found at www.jehsmith.com] Hamburg, Germany I have just given a talk at the University of Hamburg in the Ernst Cassirer Memorial Lecture Series. What my hosts did not tell me when I was invited was that the event would coincide with some…
Justin E. H. Smith [An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing is now online at www.jehsmith.com] Now that an “extreme” cookbook has hit the shelves offering, among other things, recipes for human flesh (Gastronaut, Stefan Gates, Harcourt, 257 pages; paperback, $14), perhaps our gross-out, jack-ass culture has reached the point where it is necessary to…
Justin E. H. Smith (An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing can be found at www.jehsmith.com) Now that I am a tenured professor of philosophy, and thus may resign from service in my profession’s pep squad without fear of losing my salary, I’m going to come right out and say it: after all this time…
Justin E. H. Smith When I was an undergraduate in the early 1990s, an outraged student activist of Chinese descent announced to a reporter for the campus newspaper: “Look at me! Do I look ‘Oriental’? Do you see anything ‘Oriental’ about me? No. I’m Asian.” The problem, however, is that he didn’t look particularly ‘Asian’…
Justin E. H. Smith [For an extensive archive of Justin E. H. Smith’s writing, visit www.jehsmith.com] In recent years, one of the sights that never fails to drive home to me the fact that I am back in Eastern Europe is that of hordes of travellers rushing to the grand machines in airport departure areas…
[An extensive archive of Justin Smith’s writing can be found at www.jehsmith.com] I’ve always loved borders. I still have a photo album from a 1978 tip across the United States, and remarkably the great bulk of them –matted, square prints from those old, flat cameras– are of my sister and me in Montessori school T-shirts…
(You will find an extensive archive of Justin E. H. Smith’s writing at www.jehsmith.com.) Justin E. H. Smith Contemporary evolutionary biology tells us that there are five distinct evolutionary lines in which bipedalism has emerged independently, including, among other species, lizards (see R. C. Snyder, “Adaptations for Bipedal Locomotion in Lizards,” American Zoologist 2 (1962):…
Justin E. H. Smith I would like to explain why, in the matter of the origins of species, there can be no compromise position, no accommodation by one side of the principle tenets of the other. There can be no way of conceding the basic mechanisms through which evolution works while holding onto an anthropocentric…
Justin E. H. Smith One often hears that Montreal is the New York of Canada. It seems to me one may just as well say that Iqaluit is the New York of Nunavut. Both analogies are true enough, insofar as each settlement in question is the undisputed cultural capital of its region. But analogies can…
Justin E. H. Smith There is a long tradition in philosophy, going back at least to Epicurus, of allowing examples drawn from the domain of sexuality to serve in the analysis of eating, and vice versa. Sometimes this amounts to sloppiness, but often one can gain insight. Consider the photographs of peaches or cherries that…