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Yale’s Fab Four
October 21, 1981 A local wit once told me that New Haven was the American capital of two isms; literary criticism and transvestism. As a Yale grad student, I saw daily proof of the first, but the second was a puzzle. America’s top transvestites, I was told, flocked to New Haven to stay at a […]
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The Global Theater of Forgiveness
Toward the end of his career, the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida became increasingly focused on the problem of religion—not merely as a cultural phenomenon, but as a unique structuring of language and ideas. In this essay, Derrida examines the trend of religious tropes expanding to a global scale as nations beg forgiveness for war […]
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Of Spirit
Jacques Derrida, the world’s most famous philosopher, died of pancreatic cancer in a Paris hospital on October 8. He had long been shy of the spotlight. From 1962 to 1979 he refused to be photographed, relenting only when Le Monde ran a photo of Michel Foucault with the caption “Jacques Derrida.” Wary of iconization, he […]
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The Uses of Philosophy
The symbolism of 9-11 extends to the date itself. Now we have a day whose very name is a distress call. Part of the horror is that those we expected to answer our emergency calls responded—but went to their doom with so many other victims. The towers still fell. “9-11” is still calling. Who will […]
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Deconstructing Hairy
She’s been dead for nearly half a century, but Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is the quintessential artist of our moment. Kahlo was female, Latina, disabled, bisexual, Communist, and even part Jewish. She hobnobbed with world-historical figures from Nelson Rockefeller to Leon Trotsky, yet during her lifetime was largely unrecognized outside her circle. Best of all, […]