Adorno on Trumpism

Watching Trump's stunningly dark acceptance speech last night, I got to wondering what Walter Benjamin would have thought of it. … More

What Karl Ove Knausgaard Learned from Walter Benjamin

In a nice acceptance speech for the Welt Literaturpreis, Karl Ove Knausgaard discusses what he learned from Walter Benjamin about … More

Christy Wampole ventures a reading of Roland Barthes' scarf à la Barthes. The Barthes scarf is a particularly readable and … More

Part three of my discussion on criticism in the digital age. Check out parts one and two. Recently New York … More

This isn’t a best of list so much as a list of texts and experiences that are still with me … More

Michael Kimmelman’s musings seem to have something to do with libraries, but surely urban planning can somehow help alleviate the … More

New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross thinks that the time is right to start reading Theodor Adorno and Walter … More

Alain de Botton's The Philosopher's Mail project asks if it's okay to desire a stranger in public space without them … More

In his Nuova Scienza (1710), Giambattista Vico writes, "First the woods, then cultivated fields and huts, next little houses and … More

The art as therapy idea is back, thanks to Alain de Botton. In a surprise move, the Netherlands’ top cultural institution, … More