by Katrin Trüstedt

In a Palazzo in Palermo, a video installation of a moving digital map of the sea traces the disappearance of a migrant ship. With this installation, the project Forensic Oceanography makes visible what is – even from this Palazzo, facing the Mediterranean Sea – usually removed from sight.

The figure of the migrant is, according to Thomas Nail, the political figure of our time, and this century will be the century of the migrant. In his book Nail traces the long history of migration, to question the notion of the nation state – in fact historically a fairly recent idea. Understood as a stable and organic, self-reproducing and self-sustaining whole, this notion tends to cast migrants as abnormalities and exceptions.^[1] Instead, the figure of the migrant, the stateless, and the refugee should be seen as the defining figures for our time, as writers from Hannah Arendt^[2] to Thomas Nail have suggested. With much more climate change migration to be expected, this figure can only become more crucial. While appearing quite prominently in political discourse as a problem, the migrant has remained in many other ways still unseen. It is this peculiar status of the figure of the migrant that “Forensic Oceanography” highlights in Palermo, as both excluded and included in European politics and discourse. Read more »

Frederica Krueger turned 14 a couple of days ago and this is her birthday portrait.

by Adele A Wilby

In this world of divisive and indeed, not infrequently, ugly politics, particularly in the United States under the present administration, and the British pursuit of an exit from the European Union, any opportunity for finding relief from the ‘angst’ of day to day politics is to be welcomed. The reading of Peter Wohlleben’s The Mysteries of Nature Trilogy: The Hidden Life of Trees, The Secret Network of Nature and The Inner Life of Animals provided me with such an opportunity.

Wohlleben draws on his twenty years as a government forester, and then manager of his own environmentally friendly forest in Germany, and his scientific knowledge, to share with us his experience of the inter-related, yet complex lives of a myriad of life forms in the plant and animal worlds. The result is a joy to read.

Each of his books can be read, and appreciated, in their own right, but collectively they amount to what is, in effect, how Wohlleben relates to and the respect he has for all life forms that constitute nature. The trilogy is successful, in my view, for the way he makes accessible to us his experience of working with nature, moderated by a judicious use of biological jargon. However, it is also his use of personification in his exposition of his subjects that makes it possible for the reader to realise just how integrated are the lives of all living creatures. The books are for people like me who do not have the time to take up the environment and the biological sciences as new disciplines to study, but are nonetheless interested in the natural world amidst which we live. In reading these texts we are provided with sufficient knowledge to deepen our understanding and appreciation of the natural world, and to wet our appetite to learn more about the subjects. Read more »

by Niall Chithelen

Throughout the film Late Spring (1949), the protagonist, Noriko, hides her emotions behind smiles. She smiles when happy, of course, but does so also through moments we know must be uncomfortable or sad. We take special notice, then, of the few moments in which Noriko’s face truly falls. She cannot smile through the news that her father, with whom she was living contentedly, might be remarrying. Once it seems her living situation will no longer be viable, Noriko agrees reluctantly to get married herself. On the day of her wedding, she sits, tentative in her finery, when her father comes to visit and compliments her. She smiles at him and then looks to the floor and her expression fades.

We might, as one film scholar does, see Noriko’s smiling as a sign she is a “modern girl” (moga). The film was made during the American occupation of Japan, and with the occupation and the postwar moment came cultural changes, new models and advertisements, fashionable women bearing congenial smiles. There are elements of Noriko’s life that suggest a certain modern-ness; she is wary of marriage, her professional skills are such that the work she used to do for her father Shukichi is now taken up by his Western-suited assistant, she wears Western-style clothing and has bobbed hair, she likes Gary Cooper, and she always seems to be smiling. Read more »

by Pranab Bardhan

In the next couple of months two of the largest democracies in the world—India and Indonesia—will have their national elections. At a time when democracy is under considerable pressure everywhere, the electoral and general democratic outcome in these two countries containing in total more than one and a half billion people (more than one and a half times the population in democratic West plus Japan and Australia) will be closely observed.

Let’s start with India. Many Indians, while preening about their country being the largest democracy, are often in denial about how threadbare the quality of that democracy actually has been, particularly in recent years. Indian elections are vigorous (barring some occasional complaints about intimidations and irregularities) and largely competitive (the Indian electorate is usually more anti-incumbent than, say, the American). But other essential aspects of democracy—respect for basic civic and human rights and established procedures of accountability in day-to-day governance—are quite weak. (I don’t like the oxymoronic term ‘illiberal democracy’, used by many people—from Fareed Zakaria to Viktor Orban—as this ignores those essential aspects of democracy).

In India (as in Indonesia) democracy is often mis-identified with a kind of crude majoritarianism. The Hindu nationalists which currently rule India often trample on minority rights with shameless impunity. They have created an atmosphere of hateful violence and intimidation against dissidents and minorities, where freedom of expression by artists, writers, scholars, journalists and others is routinely violated. Supposed “group rights” trump individual rights: individual freedom of expression has very little chance if some group claims to take offence. Courts sometimes take redemptive action, usually with great delay, but meanwhile the damage is done in intimidating large numbers of people. Read more »

I’m Listening to Something

I’m listening to something.
I don’t know what it’s called but it’s Chopin.
It’s a tune Alexa pulled
from the high-capacity byte magazine
of her small black canister
which sits under a lamp upon a table
against the wall (where most of us have spent
at least a little time, in a sweat)
its power umbilical plugged to an outlet,
its invisible wireless wire
stretched taut to a router
its bluesy halo perfectly apropos—
but whatever song this is, it is necessarily of the moment
—and I had asked, after all, for classical,
so maybe Alexa knows more than I
of what this moment must consist

Of what it partially consists are sounds of bells
—not bells really but the closest thing
Chopin could come up with
to be played on something
that sounds bell-like but which (again)
I admit: I haven’t a clue.

Despite having a poet’s surfeit of words
you’d think I would’ve surveyed my ground
before committing to a page, but it’s just
spontaneous magic as I sit here
among Chopin’s luscious frequencies listening,
applying Chopin to the day’s doing,
wondering why Alexa has now, unexpectedly,
shuffled Ahmad Jamal into the mix,
wondering what Ahmad’s poignant,
corazón-filled jazz has
to do with
what this very now
surely is

Jim Culleny
10/15/17

Prabhakar Kolte. Untitled, 2005.

Acrylic on canvas.

More here, and here.

by Brooks Riley

Spring in Kashmir

by Rahman Rahi

And there’s a love-torn couple
In the lap of a shikara on Dal

And there’s a vermilion cloud
In a sapphire sky flirting a peak

And there’s a deodar
With kohl-rimmed eyes

And there’s a tulip
With parched lips

And there’s a wine goblet
Bubbling with pearls

And there’s a black wasp
Digging the heart of lotus

And there’s a whirligig
Dancing

And there’s a surge
Rising, naturally.

Oh, spirit,
Amidst all this

If you did not hold my hand
And beat in tune

With my pulse,
Would you know

How my unruly heart sings
And an orchestra plays?

* * *

Abdur Rehman Rahi, b.1925, recipient of several top literary awards in India, is the greatest living poet of the Kashmiri language. He has published five collections of poems and seven books of literary criticism in Kashmiri. Rahi lives in Srinagar.

Translated from the original Kashmiri by Rafiq Kathwari for 3QD.

White rose, May, 2014.

by Joseph Shieber

One of the philosophical tools that seems utterly obvious to me is the so-called “use/mention distinction”. Because it strikes me as so obvious, it is always baffling to me that people seem to have such trouble with it.

Simply put, the use/mention distinction is this. Let’s look at use first.

In order to choose an easy case, let’s say that the word I’m using is a noun. If I use a noun, I utter or write the noun in order to refer to what the noun refers to. So if I write “Neptune is the farthest planet from the sun in our solar system”, the word “Neptune” in that sentence refers to the planet Neptune.

If I mention a word, on the other hand, I am not using the word. Let’s take the case of nouns again. If I mention the word “Neptune”, then I’m referring to the word itself, rather than the object to which the word refers. So, for example, in the sentence ‘“Neptune” isn’t the only seven-letter planetary name’, I’m referring to the word “Neptune” rather than the planet Neptune.

Simple, right?

So why does it seem so hard for people to get it?! For example, there was the recent kerfuffle over an Augsburg University professor who, in discussing James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, had a student who quoted Baldwin’s use of the N-word. The professor, then, in discussing the student’s mentioning of the word, employed the word himself. Read more »