The cultural critic Walter Benjamin is probably best known for his essay, “The work of art in the age of technological reproducibility”, and the use of the term ‘aura’ to designate the quality in a work of art that changes its singularity when it is subject to reproduction. Sean […]
Book reviews
Chile: September 1973
“Documentary photography remains important today but fifty years ago it was absolutely vital and Chas Gerresten provides visual evidence of what took place: everyday life, the demonstrations, civil unrest and the coup d’état of September 11.” Sean Sheehan Salvador Allende won the presidency of Chile in 1970 and, […]
What if …
What if Native Americans had discovered Europe, if Nazi Germany emerged victorious in World War II, if Trump wins the 2023 election? What if your parents had never met one another? Sean Sheehan Speculating along these lines invite responses ranging from intellectual curiosity to fear, trepidation and an […]
Read and weep
Hegel remarked about the Peloponnesian War that its importance is that it allowed Thucydides to write about it and the same could be said about another armed conflict from the ancient Greek world: the struggle between an alliance of Greek states and the city of Troy, in what is now […]
Do not ask for forgiveness
Jorie Graham’s “To 2040”, which provides the title for her latest collection of poetry, is a terrifying vision of what comes after the ecological meltdown that the present economic order is hurtling us towards. Sean Sheehan The human sense of time’s passage is endangered, minutes become indistinguishable from […]