by Brian Bergen-Aurand Today, 26 June 2016, is a day of action for Support. Don’t Punish, “a global advocacy campaign calling for drug policies based on health and human rights.” For twenty-four hours around the world, groups are gathering to resist the war on drugs, protest the abuse of drug users, and suggest health care … Continue reading
Author Archives: Foreign Influence
The biggest obstacle to universal basic income has nothing to do with money
The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920
Source: The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 Continue reading
Theatricality, Separation, Relation–An Ethics of Dark Tourism
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Spending the last several years studying the thought of Emmanuel Levinas in relation to ethics and comedy has led me to Emma Willis’s 2014 Theatricality, Dark Tourism and Ethical Spectatorship: Absent Others, a book about ethics and tragedy written somewhat at the collision of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Rancière around questions of … Continue reading
Disability Rights on Trial: What’s Really At Stake in the Stubblefield Case?
Situation, Location, Context
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Circumstance (2011). Director: Maryam Keshavarz. Writer: Maryam Keshavarz. Actors: Nikohl Boosheri / Sarah Kazemy / Reza Sixo Safai. Countries: France / USA/ Iran Circumstance– A fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action. One’s state of financial or material welfare. Circumstance often tops lists of recent LGBT cinema from the … Continue reading
“Culture as gesture, producing always more and other than it intends.”
by Brian Bergen-Aurand I’ve spent the last two days rereading sections of Carrie Noland’s 2009 book, Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture, and I’m even more impressed with it this second time around. I enjoyed reading the book and learned a good deal from it the first time I encountered it about a year ago. … Continue reading
The War That Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War
Originally posted on Singapore Review of Books:
When Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek arrived at Sarajevo train station on the morning of 28 June 1914, Europe was still at peace. If any of the key European statesmen of that era had been asked whether they thought a major European conflagration was likely in the near…
Cannes Film Review: ‘Lamb’
Tonnes of Loneliness
by Brian Bergen-Aurand The Band’s Visit (Directed by Eran Kolirin, Israel/USA/France, 2007) disappointed me. The film has been very well received by critics. It has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has won “over 35 international awards.” And I’ll admit, I was a fan through the first 2/3 of the film. For sixty … Continue reading
Foreign Influence 