If you are interested in the intellectual grounding of the Harlem Renaissance - and really how is it possible not to be? - then here is a good review of Alain Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth. Locke’s most famous essay, “The New Negro”, written in 1925 can [...]
Columbine Killings and hating ‘the system’
Mass murder and the American Dream. It turns out that a lot of what was said in the media about the Columbine shootings was simply wrong according to this story by Andrew Gumble in the Guardian. It turns out that the killers were not resentful nerds out to punish jocks, their aim was [...]
Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing.
From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz philosophy. [...]
Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing.
From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz philosophy. [...]
AB&H Dictionary: Is History a god?
Late last week, I visited the Public Records Office in Kew Gardens here in the UK for some archival research. The building – which is pictured above – feels and looks so much like a church that I suspect many visitors feel impelled to speak in hushed tones once they drive into the compound. After [...]
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi; buy an African farmer a chicken or a goat
There is always something new out of Africa. The latest being the website lastminute.com offering you, its customer, a chance to ‘buy a sheep, a goat or some chickens from FARM AFRICA.’ (I quote directly off their website) As you make last ditch vacation plans, you may also have a last minute change of heart [...]
What is English honour I wonder?
Is there such a thing as English honour? I mean really, what is this thing bandied about in every film and novel about the English ruling classes? I only bring it up after watching the latter half of a 1960s TV adaptation of Kidnapped, the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. The word honor was uttered [...]
The Love Affair Between the Maasai and the English
Colonialists like their savages savage in a romantic mould. There is a streak of masochism in having your material world dismissed by people who have little but vanity and some sick cows. Colonialists want to believe their subjugated people were worth conquering…they are also good for a shag now and then says AA Gill in [...]
The Mythology of Project Keenya
Binyavanga Wainaina is back, this time with a rant on this blog’s favourite subject, Kenyan or African nationhood.
Most mythologies of nationalism cannot stand the scrutiny of logic. This is why one party states, and KANU (Kenya’s former ruling party) youth wingers and the hundreds of choir masters whose career consisted of composing praise songs for [...]
Africans and the European Soul
Are the Formerly Colonised Set To Colonise Their Colonisers?
(A speculation)
It has come to my delighted attention that African churches are increasingly sending missionaries to the United Kingdom. And that the declining number of British volunteers joining the Catholic priesthood - in Wales for instance - has meant that African priests are increasingly taking over rural [...]
THE PAIN MACHINE: The Collapse of the Gikuyu Social Contract
This is the beginning of an essay that I am writing for publication and that I felt driven to post before its completion in the hope that it would elicit stories that confirm or contradict it. I will post the complete version in the coming months - probably in late September - for now [...]