The poet and novelist Adam Foulds on the evolution of loneliness and its traditionally privileged cousin, solitude; Sam Leith on thrills, spills and racism in Willard Price’s children’s Adventure series; Molly Guinness dips into 300-odd years of children’s books and finds leaden instruction, radical ideas and pure nonsense
A History of Solitude by David Vincent
A Biography of Loneliness: The history of an emotion by Fay Bound Alberti
Discovering Children’s Books, the British Library online
Você sabia que a Netflix provavelmente começou por causa de uma multa por um DVD atrasado? Sabia que a plataforma é responsável pela maior fatia de tráfego de internet?
Sabia que ela monitora tudo o que todo mundo faz lá dentro? E que usa isso pra planejar em que tipo de produção investir?
Sabia que House of Cards e Stranger Things só são do jeito que são porque um sistema de inteligência artificial previu que aqueles ingredientes juntos fariam sucesso?
Quer saber mais? Quer saber qual é o impacto da Netflix na forma com a gente produz e consome filmes e séries?
Pois é só dar o play.
*****
– Colabore com a Rádio Escafandro e receba recompensas.
Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) became associated with the triumph of liberal democracy at the end of the twentieth century. But was Fukuyama really a triumphalist? David explores what Fukuyama had to say about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy and asks whether his analysis still holds true today. What have we learned about the modern state from its history? And can it, and we, really change now?
Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) challenges two dominant ways of thinking about politics: liberalism, which wants to protect us from the power of the state, and Marxism, which wants to liberate us through the power of the state. What if neither is good enough to emancipate women? Mackinnon explains why patriarchal power permeates all forms of modern politics. David
Hirsh Sawhney files a lockdown dispatch from New Haven, Connecticut, the uneasy home of Yale University; Arin Keeble talks us through the tricksy, rewarding and under-known work of Percival Everett; Lauren Kassel on the history of astrology, one of the oldest, most complex, intellectually powerful – and controversial – sciences
Telephone by Percival Everett
A Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the birth of science by Alexander Boxer
Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who both experienced and analysed the impact of colonial violence. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961) he developed an account of politics that sought to channel violent resistance to colonialism as a force for change. It is a deliberately shocking book. David explores what Fanon’s argument says about the possibility of moving beyond the power of the modern state.
Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) is a remarkably prophetic book. At its heart is an analysis of the relationship between labour, work and action, set against a time of rapid technological change. Arendt worried about the power of computers, believed in the capacity of people to reinvent themselves through politics and despaired of the influence of Thomas Hobbes. Was she right?
A tuberculose forçou Manuel Bandeira (1886-1968) a renunciar a escolhas e a levar uma "longa vida provisória" isolado em sanatórios e em seu quarto de doente, tendo a morte sempre à espreita. Autor do estudo Humildade, Paixão e Morte, o crítico Davi Arrigucci Jr. explica como Bandeira fez da poesia uma meditação filosófica e um aprendizado sobre a morte. Participação especial de Alice Sant'Anna.
The TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Crane guides us through a selection of reviews and essays from this week’s issue, including on the future of AI and what Thomas Hobbes, Susan Sontag, Montaigne and the trolley problem can tell us about our present predicament; the novelist Will Eaves re-reads Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, “a caravan of episodes, made up of people going through the same horror in different ways”, and ponders a big-screen adaptation…
No terceiro episódio sobre os impactos e lições do coronavírus, falamos de como a pandemia já afetou, e ainda vai afetar, a nós humanos. Primeiro, do ponto de vista mais pessoal e particular. Depois, de forma ampla e global.
Para isso contamos com nada menos do que dez convidados.
Um psicanalista, um historiador, dois escritores, uma jornalista, uma professora uma futurista, um arqueólogo, uma faxineira diarista e o Tomé, que tem sete anos, e quer ser cientista, ou astronauta, ou cantor, ou surfista, ou diretor de cinema, ou cozinheiro.
*****
– Colabore com a Rádio Escafandro e receba recompensas.
Graduado em História pela Universidade de São Paulo, Mestre e Doutor em Arqueologia pela Universidade de Indiana e Livre-Docente pela Universidade de São Paulo. Professor Titular de Arqueologia Brasileira do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo.
Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written during the Second World War but Hayek was really worried about what would come next. He feared that wartime planning would spill over into the peacetime economy and destroy hard won freedoms. David explores where Hayek’s fears came from and asks why he worried that democracy would only make the problem worse. He also considers what makes Hayek such a politically influential and divisive figure to this day.
Max Weber’s The Profession and Vocation of Politics (1919) was a lecture that became one of the defining texts of twentieth century political thought. In it, Weber explores the perils and paradoxes of leadership in a modern state. Is it possible to do bad in order to do good? Can violence ever be virtuous? Does political responsibility send politicians mad? David discusses the legacy of Weber’s ideas and asks: who is the true Weberian politician?
Ian Buruma on the twentieth-century Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, a fascist and a fabulist with a hunger for war and a remarkable way of capturing it; Sue Stuart-Smith on gardening in the trenches of the First World War and the concept of horticultural therapy; to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the TLS's history editor David Horspool talks us through a range of books, articles and essays covering the Second World War
Selected books
Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, by Curzio Malaparte, translated from the Italian and the French by Stephen Twilley
The Well-Gardened Mind: The restorative power of nature, by Sue Stuart-Smith
Dresden: The fire and the darkness, by Sinclair McKay
The Volunteer: The true story of the resistance hero who infiltrated Auschwitz, by Jack Fairweather
Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) was a defining text of the movement for Indian independence from British colonial rule. It also articulated a radical new idea of politics in a modern context – peaceful protest or non-violent resistance. David explores the wider legacy of Gandhi’s ideas and asks what Gandhi’s withering attack on ‘machine’ politics means for the politics we have today.
The Communist Manifesto (1848) remains the most famous revolutionary text of all. But what was the problem with politics that only a revolution could solve? And why were the working class the only people who could solve it? David explores what Marx and Engels really had to say about capitalism, crisis and class and he asks what still resonates from that message today.
Uma porta de entrada para o universo de Elizabeth Bishop. A homenageada da Flip 2020 é apresentada por seu tradutor: o poeta Paulo Henriques Britto fala da vida e da obra da americana, da relação dela com o Brasil, dos desafios de traduzir poesia e das opiniões políticas dela, que apoiou o golpe de 64. Participação especial da poeta Angélica Freitas e da tradutora Flora Thomson-DeVeaux.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) can claim to be the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America. David discusses what Tocqueville was expecting when he went to see American democracy for himself and what he actually found. Tocqueville was amazed and impressed by the American way of doing politics, but his fears about how its democracy might go wrong remain as prescient as ever.
James Waddell on the disorderly history of alphabetic order; Beejay Silcox, who fled Cairo for Western Australia as the coronavirus spread, tells a tale of star-crossed lovers; Jordan Sand gives a short cultural history of mask-wearing
A Place for Everything: The curious history of alphabetical order by Judith Flanders
Benjamin Constant’s ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Liberty of the Moderns’ (1819) examines what it means to be free in the modern world. Are we at liberty to follow our hearts? Do we have an obligation to take an interest in politics? What happens if we don’t? David explores the lessons Constant drew from the failures of the French Revolution and his timeless message about the perils of political indifference.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women to illustrate what’s gone wrong with politics. It’s a story of lust and power, education and revolution. David explores how Wollstonecraft’s radical challenge to the basic ideas of modern politics continues to resonate today.
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