All forms of life matter because all human beings are part of the encompassing family of living beings, argues Bert Olivier
ideology
Posted inLifestyle
Ideology and enjoyment: A reading of the film ‘It Could Happen to You’
It Could Happen to You reveals an ideology that measures value exclusively in terms of money, despite its best intentions
Posted inGeneral, Health, Media, Tech
Should one question technology’s drive for dominance?
In a sense, the titular question, above, is redundant. Technology is, after all, already dominant — a claim that hardly needs to be substantiated with evidence; it is there for everyone to perceive on a daily basis. Not that the objects of ‘perception’ are self-evident in any straightforward way. In social reality a good deal […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, News/Politics
The battle for America’s soul is also the battle for the world’s soul
Watching the tragicomedy playing itself out in America around the determined attempt on the part of Trump and the Republicans on the Senate, to appoint Brett Kavanaugh as lifetime judge on the panel of judges of the US Supreme Court, I had the uncanny feeling that this showdown between the forces of retrogressive neoconservatism and […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
The present ‘world dis-order’
Bernard Stiegler, referring to the battle for the attention of (particularly young) users of technical devices such as smartphones, writes about the ‘dis-attention’ that results from this. What he has in mind is the manner in which capitalism, not wasting any opportunity for marketing, uses these mnemo-technical devices to disrupt the flow of attention on […]
Posted inBusiness, General
The essence of neoliberalism
France’s pre-eminent sociologist and social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, who died not so long ago, did not pull his punches when it came to identifying the hegemonic economic system of the present, neoliberalism, ruthlessly as a “utopia of endless exploitation”. In an article titled “The essence of neoliberalism” (in Le Monde Diplomatique, December 1998) he puts […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
‘Decolonisation’, the new ideology
Everywhere one looks today in South Africa you find a new imperative: “Decolonise!” In certain academic quarters it has evidently already attained the level of a new ideology, where academics are expected to “decolonise” the courses they teach (and presumably the articles they submit for publication as well). What astonishes me is that academics do […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
The lie that society is founded on
In Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2010) that inimitable Slovenian philosopher cum psychoanalytical theorist Slavoj Žižek performs a dazzling analysis of Christopher Nolan’s genealogical Batman film The Dark Knight (2008). What his analysis brings to light is something that, Žižek reminds one, John Ford also explored cinematically years ago in Fort Apache (1948) […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
What is ideology?
Those of us who were studying at the time of the great “cold war” tussle between the superpowers would remember that, at that time, one thought of ideology as a more or less coherent system of ideas that demanded a way of living, or certain actions in accordance with those ideas. So, for example, communism […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Charlie Hebdo, laughter, dogma and ‘truth’
The recent “terrorist” attacks at the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, France, is a stark reminder of something that the Italian semiotician, philosopher, novelist and universal scholar Umberto Eco thematised in his first novel, The Name of the Rose (1998), namely, the supposedly negative, mutually exclusive relationship between what is taken to be absolute, […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle, Media
Feminism isn’t for everybody, but it could be
This morning I read Danielle Bowler’s commentary on the good versus bad feminist debate in her column “We are all bad feminists, and that’s okay”. While I’m all for a nuanced and reflexive critique on feminisms and their limitations in order to better develop and strengthen the movement, I found myself puzzled by what read […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
How to challenge your whiteness…
I am a white South African man, and when I wrote about the problems of white masculinity I faced a barrage of abusive tweets, threats and even a phone call to one of my work colleagues to complain about my writing. Ironically, all of this proved the argument I was making. More importantly: it proved […]