I first encountered the term ‘hegemony’ when, as a precocious teenager, I read widely about international politics. Here, it described a country’s sphere of influence. Steve Latham Later, at university, I discovered it was used by Marxists, referring to capitalism’s ideological dominance. I learned to distinguish these uses, […]
EdgeNotes
EdgeNotes
Sex under capitalism
“Nothing is what it seems”. So goes the Zen Buddhist saying. Karl Marx echoed it with his famous statement: “Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on […]
The blue flower
I have a distinct childhood memory, of a scene from a film I saw, where a man is looking at a blue flower, which I remember as a blue rose. Steve Latham The image has stayed with me, throughout my life: a picture disconnected from anything else, anything […]
Conversion therapy and religious faith
The Prisma recently featured an interview with Jayne Ozanne, a leading progressive Christian in the United Kingdom. Steve Latham Herself a lesbian, she is seeking to enable legislation in Parliament, outlawing conversion therapy (CT). CT refers to supposedly psychological attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation, from LGBTQ to […]
Meditation on desire
Popular culture enjoins us to follow our desires, to pursue our dreams. But is it sufficient? This can be considered exteriorly and interiorly. Steve Latham Exteriorly, we must ask: Do we really want what we want? It is a commonplace observation that capitalism creates desires, for objects and […]