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Why are we always buying stuff?

The author of “Pure excess: Capitalism and the commodity” does not go in for abstruseness. As with his earlier “Embracing alienation”, Todd McGowan unpacks and develops ideas from heavyweight thinkers, and explains them with a lightness of touch without sacrificing their depth.   Sean Sheehan   The commodity, something bought […]

Book reviews Comments Culture In Focus

A torturer sues his victim

The opening paragraph of “Searching for memory: Aluízio Palmar and the shadow of dictatorship in Brazil” brings the startling news that in 2019 Aluízio Palmar was sued by the retired army officer who had once tortured him.   Sean Sheehan   Aluízio was an armed militant opposed to Brazil’s dictatorship […]

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Candelario Obeso, the black poet

Such was the misery he had to suffer, that he came to witness the death by starvation of his children, who slowly disappeared due to the unhealthiness of a city with neither electric light, an aqueduct nor a sewer. Unlike the shot fired in his heart by the poet José […]