A Website of the Radical Imagination
About Benj Demott Introduction The most famous line of the most famous book of one of the great American public intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth-century defines “the problem” of the coming century as “the problem of the color-line.” The Souls of Black Folk (1903) uses the sentence three times, and may not refer exclusively to … Read more
First is honored (and stoked!) to reprint the following tributes (which originally appeared in a German publisher’s “yearbook”) to two classic ethnographies. The Stones Ethnographers Trip Over By John Chernoff In my first course in cultural anthropology, more than thirty years ago during the heyday of structuralism and functionalism, the first ethnography we students read was … Read more
Walking the Tiger’s Path: A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey Paul Kendel Tendril Press, 2011 “The Tiger’s Path” is the name that the Buddhist teacher Sakyong Mipham gives “the path of discernment” in his book Ruling Your World. “Venturing onto the path of the tiger, we place our paws carefully. We respect karma; we know that every … Read more
Afro-pop artist Busi Mhlongo died of cancer in 2010 a few months after releasing her folk gospel record, Amakholwa. Bongani Madondo — South Africa’s most original pop writer — wrote an appreciation of that CD which should resonate for readers alive to Black Atlantic traditions. You don’t have to know Mhlongo’s music to feel Madondo’s … Read more
THE KILLING of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Muatasim was not a pretty sight. After seeing it once, I looked away when it was shown again and again on TV – literally ad nauseam. Commercial TV exists, of course, to make money for the tycoons by appealing to the basest instincts and tastes of the … Read more
The author is a doctor and priest who has been working in Haiti for a generation, running hospitals and social programs in Port au Prince as well as a Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage on the outskirts of the capital. For a few minutes he was just another dead man. That was the easiest way for me. … Read more
Bernard Avishai has been working on an article set to appear soon in The New York Times Magazine based on exclusive recent interviews with Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas that indicate the two leaders were very close to achieving a peace deal two years ago. Details about Palestinian concessions during those negotiations have been leaked … Read more