Cultural Capital
Reflections on books and the arts from the New Statesman culture desk
A rouger shade of Palin
Posted by Tom Calvocoressi - 20 November 2009 11:35
Those who seek to satirise Sarah, we salute you!
As the Scary Sarah Palin Show rolls into a town near you (if you live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that is), with the former Alaskan governor, failed Republican VP candidate and inveterate "hockey mom" signing copies of her autobiography Going Rogue: an American Life, it seems timely to pay tribute to all those satirists and lefties who continue to succeed in undermining ...
The responsibilities of the intellectual
Posted by Anna Maria Di Brina - 18 November 2009 15:39
Roberto Saviano’s letter to Berlusconi
A new law could allow Berlusconi to avoid trial again. Credit: Getty Images
What are the responsibilities of the intellectual? It's an old question. Writers and journalists have often been called upon to act as defenders of freedom of speech, for example, and sometimes have had to pay for their words with exile or with their lives. But their role is vital, especially in rousing opposition to dictatorial or otherwise illegitimate regimes. It is the ...
Native spirit
Posted by Owen Van Spall - 18 November 2009 11:30
A season of films celebrates the struggles of indigenous peoples across the globe
Credit: Getty Images
Coming on the heels of the glamour of the London Film Festival, earlier this month the Native Spirit Foundation offered a quieter, more serious programme hidden away from the Southbank and the buzz of Leicester Square. Divided between the Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre in Shoreditch, the 16mm Cafe in Soho, and Fitzrovia's Bolivar Hall, the 3rd Native Spirit Festival ...
The man who knew too much
Posted by Jonathan Derbyshire - 17 November 2009 16:51
Diaries of the man who reported on Stalin's "terror famine" made public
Gareth Jones defied many on the left to report on Stalin's crimes. Credit: Getty Images
They call it the "Holodomor" in Ukraine -- the "terror famine" administered by Stalin that caused the deaths of millions of people in 1932 and 1933. Very little news of the horror made it out of the Soviet Union. But one Western journalist who did manage to get the story to the outside world was a young Welsh reporter named ...
Jailhouse rock
Posted by Patrick Sawer - 17 November 2009 15:56
Billy Bragg's charity takes an unusual approach to prisoner rehabilitation
Prisoner rehabilitation is not the most fashionable of causes for pop stars to espouse. Which is why you have to admire singer Billy Bragg's efforts to recruit his colleagues onto a project offering hope to those locked up inside Britain's jails.
Bragg has persuaded the likes of Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett, The Clash's co-founder Mick Jones and Dirty Pretty Things, to stage ...
Would Socrates have got research funding?
Posted by Jonathan Derbyshire - 16 November 2009 11:46
The perils of "measurable output"
As an addendum to my previous post on the Research Excellence Framework, let me point you to a piece written three years ago for the Times Higher by the philosopher Simon Blackburn. Blackburn was writing in the era of the REF's predecessor, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)but the problems he describes are familiar:
[W]e . . . find with gratitude ...
The impact of "impact"
Posted by Jonathan Derbyshire - 16 November 2009 09:44
Stefan Collini on why academics shouldn't have to be salesmen
Last month, I blogged about the establishment of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which lays down the criteria for the disbursement of research funding in British universities. One of those criteria concerns the likely "impact" of academic research. And, as I pointed out, the problem with this is that it's hard to quantify the short-term impact of research in the ...
The illusion of a world without borders
Posted by Simon Reid-Henry - 10 November 2009 16:57
20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the discourse of security has replaced the dreams of democracy
The fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago is rightly taken as a symbol not just of the ending of an oppressive regime but of the dismantling of a monstrous barrier between families, communities and societies. It also marked the moment when a new, more "borderless" world seemed upon us.
It is good that we can celebrate the demise of that ...
Chinese whispers
Posted by Daniel Trilling - 10 November 2009 10:28
Xiaolu Guo on the voices of a changing country
This year's Doc/Fest in Sheffield, which I caught the tail end of at the weekend, had a great selection of films on show. Of note were Men of the City, Marc Isaac's surprisingly tender portrait of workers in the City of London, and Erik Grandini's Videocracy, which unpicks the poisonous links between celebrity culture and political power in Berlusconi's Italy. There ...
Michael Moore: Q+A
Posted by Daniel Trilling - 08 November 2009 09:11
The documentary-maker on capitalism, Obama and why Britain is about to get punished
This weekend, I've been watching films at Sheffield's Doc/Fest. One of the highlights so far has been Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, which Jonathan has already blogged about here. After the screening, Moore answered questions from the audience (via Skype, no less); below are a few choice excerpts.
Your film outlines the human impact of last year's financial crash. Do ...
Shlomo Sand in conversation with the New Statesman
Posted by Jonathan Derbyshire - 06 November 2009 15:48
The Invention of the Jewish People
This coming Monday, 9 November, I'll be chairing an "In conversation with the New Statesman" event at Borders, Charing Cross Road in London, with Professor Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People, and Denis MacShane MP. The discussion begins at 6.30pm and admission is free. I do hope as many readers as possible are able to make it.
Here ...
Science as a "political act"
Posted by Jonathan Derbyshire - 06 November 2009 10:26
Pierre Bourdieu on Claude Lévi-Strauss
In memory of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died ealier this week, here's a lovely clip of the late Pierre Bourdieu explaining how Lévi-Strauss reimagined the role of the intellectual.
...
Gay rights and "cultural relativism"
Posted by Petra Davis - 05 November 2009 18:24
A response to Peter Tatchell
"[A] big error by some multiculturalists has been to bow to demands for cultural sensitivity by tacitly accepting that some peoples and communities can be exempt from the norms of universal human rights," argues the veteran lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) campaigner Peter Tatchell in the Independent today.
Tatchell's piece is an excerpt from his talk "Multiculturalism: the Subversion of Human ...
Universal soldiers
Posted by Sam Kinchin-Smith - 05 November 2009 17:47
Asterix and Obelix, 50 years on
For the past couple of weeks, Asterix the Gaul's 50th birthday has been the subject of sustained media attention, thanks largely to the tributes that erupted all over Paris throughout October. (In 1959, a short Asterix and Obelix comic strip in the magazine Pilote was published -- it wasn't until 1961 that the first full "album", Asterix the Gaul, started a ...
A life less ordinary
Posted by Nesrine Malik - 05 November 2009 11:24
Why modern film-makers should not be afraid of tackling Islam
When I was growing up, watching The Message was the Eid festival equivalent of watching It's a Wonderful Life at Christmas. An epic detailing the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of Islam, it was shot twice -- once in English with western actors and once in Arabic with a pan-Arab cast. The Prophet was never represented on screen, ...
Elia Suleiman and the politics of disappointment
Posted by Jonathan Derbyshire - 02 November 2009 08:55
Doha diary, part 3
The second story on the front page of Doha's English-language newspaper the Peninsula yesterday concerned the declaration by the emir's economic adviser that Qatar had no plans to sell gas to Israel. Dr Ibrahim al-Ibrahim had been challenged by an audience member on the Qatari equivalent of Question Time to confirm that Israel wouldn't be benefiting any time soon from the ...
