Roberto is a PhD recipient in Philosophy and Postcolonial Literature.
Times are tough. These times I mean. Or rather, Tim Blake Nelson does, or seems to do in his Anesthesia. These are times of self-absorbing, self-imbibing, self-obsessed selfishness from which we’re constantly trying to tell ourselves apart — unwittingly remitting ourselves to the badlands of choice wherein our decisions continue to be ruled by self-interest…
Neil Hamburger’s first gig in town was Neil Hamburger’s last gig in town. It took place on one of those flawless summer nights during which the desire to be covered by the sky tends to turn any indoor activity into an uncanny choice. And uncanny was the result. His act was the antithesis of the…
“With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago; And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason, Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro, Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken, Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent Out naked on the…
Memory minds. It minds who you are, but, more particularly, who you were. It minds who you love, but, quite peculiarly, who you hate. For Zev and Max, it all has been a long ride till retaliation. For if it is true that no vengeance is possible without memory, no grievances exist when they cannot…
Light has not always stood for reason, or for the power of the mind. All the tropes that became common during the Hellenistic era and Neoplatonic thought, and that were later recycled during the Enlightenment (when celebration was allotted to all things Greek) had a common ancestor. Light, before that, used to stand simply for…
One of the main reasons why words are so fascinating is because they can house inside mutually exclusive meanings. They are the embodiment of freedom, for they can harbor opposite significations while keeping their expressive powers intact. This is the case of the Amharic word difret. On the one hand, this word embodies the very…
“What’s in a name?” asked Romeo in the whirling voice of William Shakespeare to a Juliet whose smell was as sweet as roses. Difficult to say what’s in it. Doubtless it is essential, whether to what the thing is, to what it turns out to be or just as our means to refer to it….
