Kester Brewin

I’m currently enjoying one of Zizek’s new books, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce – an allusion to Marx’s introduction to his Eighteenth Brumaire in which he wrote:
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second [...]

Whenever a gift is given, an invisible cargo is exchanged with it, loaded with semi-conscious messages about power-relations between giver and receiver. Offering an expensive gift to someone can be a power-play: I am rich enough to give you this. Even letting someone out into traffic can carry the same message: I am more gracious [...]

There is only one thing on the children’s minds: presents. There has probably been only one thing on many of our minds these last few weeks: what to buy for who? How much is appropriate to spend? What did they give me last year? How will they think of me if I give them this?
It [...]

An excellent discussion starter here from Michael Sandel (The BBC’s 2009 Reith Lecturer) on the limits of the market. In it he discusses what should and should not be sold, raising some very interesting questions about surrogate pregnancy, prostitution and hard labour. His point is made best, I feel, in relation to war: would it [...]

One of the podcasts I subscribe to is the BBC’s More or Less – a weekly look at the numbers behind the news. Teaching Mathematics one is always in need of some relevant applications, and this has it in spades.
Their recent episode on sustainable energy was very interesting, but fell into the trap that numbers [...]

Interesting piece on Radio 4’s arts flagship Front Row this evening, concerning etiquette at classical concerts. There has been some consternation among the classical faithful that a new breed of concert-goers are filling the seats, and they simply don’t know when to applaud.
Etiquette has it that one doesn’t at the end of movements, only at [...]

I think the time is right to drop the curtain on ‘Signs of Emergence’  / ‘The Complex Christ’ / ‘Der Jesus Faktor’ and move on. The idea of this blog has been to give some space to extend the ideas presented in that book, and, personally, I feel that’s been successful.
But you shouldn’t keep flogging [...]