Kafka, Orwell, Huxley: The Surveillance State in Literature

Even since the days before the Edward Snowden revelations there have been comparisons made between the powers of the NSA Continue reading →

From Huxley to Jung: The Psychology of Initiation Rites

Initiation rites are an integral part of traditional societies. An initiation rite is a ritual or ceremony marking entrance or Continue reading →

The ‘Champagne Socialist’ Fallacy

‘Champagne socialist,’ ‘limousine liberal’, or my personal favourite ‘bourgeois bohemian’ are equivalent accusations aimed at people who advocate socialist thought, Continue reading →

Man, the Animal Without Essence

In the second half of his most famous work, Technics and Time, 1, ‘Prometheus’s Liver’, Bernard Stiegler analyses the Greek myth Continue reading →

Borges and Calvino: Invisible Cities and Dreams

  …Marco’s answers and objections took their place in a discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Khan’s Continue reading →

No Place to Hide: The Importance of Glenn Greenwald’s Newest Book

‘There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or Continue reading →

When Fiction Lives In Fiction

Fantastic Borges essay on the history of meta-fiction and its role in literature. After a thorough search of Google I couldn’t Continue reading →

What Would Life Look Like Without Advertising?

What would life look like without advertisement? This is a question that seems almost unthinkable to us in a modern Continue reading →

Wagner’s The Tale of Lohengrin: Knight of the Swan (1913) – Book Pictures and History

This was one of the most amazing and memorable Christmas presents I’ve ever been given, it was originally my great Continue reading →

LSE Public Discussion: ‘After Snowden’ (Recordings)

What are the implications of surveillance, big data, malware and hacking for individuals and societies? What conversations do we need Continue reading →

The Importance of the Synthetic A Priori in Kant’s First Critique

For Kant, the analytic/synthetic distinction and the a priori/a posteriori distinction are fundamental building blocks in his philosophy. In this Continue reading →

Slavoj Zizek writes for Ambercrombie and Fitch

The internet truly does bring up some strange things. Whilst researching an article about São Paulo’s current city-wide ban on advertising Continue reading →

My Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014

My Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014 I’ve read so many fantastic books this year but here’s a quick summary Continue reading →

Borges’ Dreamtigers

  A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images Continue reading →

It’s Time For a Serious Discussion About Psychedelics

Ed Miliband recently stated on the program Bite the Ballot: ‘while I haven’t taken drugs, I’ve got a pretty clear Continue reading →

Paranoia in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly

paranoia /ˌparəˈnɔɪə/ noun a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically worked into an Continue reading →

Modafinil – Are Smart Drugs Really That Smart?

If you’ve been reading the national newspapers over the last couple of years you’d be forgiven for believing that students Continue reading →

Citizenfour, Snowden, and the Problem of Privacy

In the USA, 1972, the Watergate scandal shook the foundations of the American political institution in what has been described Continue reading →

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Non-Fictions

Another Borges book. Another 5 stars. I mean this man is so brilliant I’m starting to turn into a dithering Continue reading →

The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: The Role of the Slave In Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals

In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche aims to provide a new philosophical standpoint, one based on the concept of value Continue reading →

Proletarianization in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops

‘cannot you see […] that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really Continue reading →

The Influence of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’

I’ve never been so indecisive about what to rate a book as I have been with Kafka’s The Trial. Upon Continue reading →

Bioy Casares: Time Images in The Invention of Morel

Ok, so I decided to pick this up as I found out Bioy was a friend of Borges (who just Continue reading →

To what extent has Kierkegaard’s view of the self influenced Heidegger’s conception of Dasein?

 ‘A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self Continue reading →