Author: Ophelia Benson

‘Mathematics is absolutely integrated with Western civilization, which conquered and dominated the entire world.’

Centrality is so uncool that the margins are as full of people as Bangkok or the Aran Islands.

Beware of neo-Deistic pseudoreligion.

‘…all but a fraction of his own writing molders unattended in America’s used bookstores. Like the New York Intellectuals with whom he was associated…he is referenced more often than read, a sad fate for a critic who wrote so much, so well and with such wit and insight.’

‘…many of the widely accepted claims promulgated by therapists are based on subjective clinical opinions and have been resoundingly disproved by empirical research conducted by psychological scientists.’

‘But the gender-genre books that are based largely on clinical intuition and popular psychology typically lack a basic skepticism toward received wisdom and the willingness to wrestle with an idea to see who wins.’

Consider Will Crooks, Labour MP. ‘Growing up in extreme poverty…Crooks spent 2d. on a secondhand Iliad, and was dazzled…’

Literary criticism, cultural studies; love letter and satire.

Miller wonders why ‘unavailing Latinate neologisms’ convince so many people that something profound is being said.

‘The anti-intellectuals are finally on the side of power at its most unforgiving and voracious.’

What life was really like in Saddam’s Iraq and what it’s like now.

Book reviews in glossy magazines, worshipful interviewers on public radio and tv, ‘annoying’ as the ultimate condemnation…

Sally Satel looks at the way we construct narratives about our symptoms.

The way to ‘reject the insipid relativism of the tabula rasa without denying or ignoring the freedom and variability of individual human beings and their cultures.’

Slaughter of innocents, human sacrifice, eternal torture – it’s all there.

‘Among his many weapons are a forensic curiosity, a vast learning, a savage wit, a commanding intellect, an international perspective and a moral authority that is built on something sturdier than cheap moralising.’

‘Death and marriage may have fed and fuelled her writing, but – posthumously at least – they cramp her style.’

The world is a jungle, barely one child in a hundred escapes being murdered! Or so you would think.

The new chauvinism receives official sanction from government and academic institutions.

What if you want to talk about an authentic self instead of an ‘authentic self’?