In “The Castle”, Richard Mosse deploys hi-tech thermographic cameras of the kind associated with stealth surveillance by the military. He uses the technology to record moments of life in refugee camps and border crossings along the migration routes into Europe from neighbouring continents. Sean Sheehan The site for […]
Culture
Wittgenstein and Trump: the politics of grammar
In Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus”, language has an unassailable grip on reality. It pictures the world but cannot say how it mirrors reality because we cannot get outside of language to see this mirroring. In his late philosophy, we find the antipode: language has no essence; language-games have different rules and different […]
The disappearing world of the Penans
A brief encounter with a Penan is burned into my memory. I was following a pathway, a mere stroll before darkness fell in the Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak where I was on a two-day trek. Sean Sheehan He stepped out of the trees on one side, about to […]
The Situationist International
The Situationist International (SI) was founded in 1957 and disbanded in 1972 but its ideas sparkle with relevance and a new book from Pluto Press makes this abundantly clear. Sean Sheehan The nine chapters of the book’s first part, Key Contexts, does what it says on the tin, […]
Unfolding the politics of memory
Writing about Kafka, Walter Benjamin explains how the word ‘unfolding’ has two meanings: a bud unfolds into a blossom while a paper boat unfolds into a flat sheet of paper. Sean Sheehan Two years later, writing “The storyteller”, he says how storytelling, rooted in oral tradition, allows the […]