Derek Sayer | University of Alberta (original) (raw)

I am a British/Canadian writer and academic—British by birth, Canadian by choice. If pushed to define my field, I would say on the edges between social theory, historical sociology, and cultural history.

Educated in the UK at the Universities of Essex and Durham, I began my academic career writing on the historical experience of socialist construction in the USSR and China (Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory, 1978, and For Mao, 1979, both with Philip Corrigan and Harvie Ramsay), social theory (Marx’s Method, 1979; Society, with David Frisby, 1986; The Violence of Abstraction, 1987; Capitalism and Modernity, 1990), and state formation (The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution, with Philip Corrigan, 1985).

I taught sociology at the University of Glasgow from 1979 before moving to the University of Alberta, Canada in 1986. I chaired the U of A Sociology Department from 1996-2000 and held a Canada Research Chair in Social Theory and Cultural Studies from 2000-2005, with an honorary cross-appointment in the History Department.

I co-founded the Journal of Historical Sociology (Wiley-Blackwell), which I continued to co-edit until 2022, with Philip Corrigan in 1988, and have been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1994.

Since the 1990s the core of my work has been a trilogy of books published by Princeton University Press that take the city of Prague as an alternative vantage point from which to excavate what Walter Benjamin called the dreamworlds of modernity. These are The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (1998); Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (2013); and Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History (2022).

I moved back to the UK in 2006 to take up a Chair in Cultural History at Lancaster University, where I served as head of the History Department from 2009-12. Increasingly dismayed by developments in UK higher education, I got diverted by the UK’s comically misnamed Research Excellence Framework (REF) into writing Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF (2015), after which I retired from Lancaster and returned to Canada.

Retirement has given me not only more time to write, but freedom to do so in a way that is not driven by the targets of “impact” and income generation set by the philistines that currently run UK universities. As well as Postcards from Absurdistan, my recent publications include a short book, Making Trouble: Surrealism and the Human Sciences, in the Prickly Paradigm Press pamphlets series (2017), and a popular history-cum-travel guide, Prague: Crossroads of Europe, which was published in Reaktion Books’ Cityscopes series in 2018.

Future publication plans include a trio of books for Brill in Europe and Haymarket Press in North America in the Historical Materialism series, comprising (1) a reissue of The Great Arch, together with eight other texts by Philip Corrigan and/or I on aspects of state formation; (2) a reissue of Marx’s Method and The Violence of Abstraction in a single volume; and (3) a selection of my essays over the years in social theory and cultural history, provisionally entitled Undisciplined.

I publish less academic writings and comments on current affairs at https://dereksayer.substack.com/publish/posts

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Books by Derek Sayer

Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century, 2013

This is the Introduction and Chapter 1 of my 2013 book Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: ... more This is the Introduction and Chapter 1 of my 2013 book Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton University Press). These "deep cuts" are taken from New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations (Vol. 26,No. 2(S)/2018) that was devoted to my work.

The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, 1998

This is the introduction ("Bearings") to my 1998 book The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, tog... more This is the introduction ("Bearings") to my 1998 book The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, together with the closing two sections of Ch. 5 "Modernisms and Modernities" discussing the arts in interwar Prague. The book was published by Princeton University Press. These "deep cuts" are taken from New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations (Vol. 26,No. 2(S)/2018) that was devoted to my work.

Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF, 2015

This is a brief extract from my book Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF (Sage, 2015, pp. 38-... more This is a brief extract from my book Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF (Sage, 2015, pp. 38-46), dealing with the competence or otherwise of the UK's REF disciplinary sub-panels to undertake meaningful peer review of research outputs. After some introductory remarks I exemplify the range of expertise on the History sub-panel in the last REF, relative to the range of outputs the panelists were required to assess.

I am posting it as a contribution to the debate on Twitter between Dorothy Bishop and Peter Mandler, and in particular in response to Mandler's tweet of 26 November 2018: "I would defend the quality of peer review in REF - both because it is one of the last redoubts of academic self-governance in the funding system - and because the job is just about manageable and I believe generally done well." Professor Mandler was President of the Royal Historical Society from 2012-2016.

Blackwell issued a 2nd edition of The Great Arch in 1991, six years after the original publicatio... more Blackwell issued a 2nd edition of The Great Arch in 1991, six years after the original publication, for which Philip Corrigan and I wrote a postscript responding to various reviews of the book and clarifying and extending its arguments. The 2nd edition had a very small print-run and soon went out of print, so this text is little known. I'm posting a downloadable scan here for anyone interested.

As promised. In this brief afterword to the 2nd ed. of Marx's Method, published in 1983, I took ... more As promised. In this brief afterword to the 2nd ed. of Marx's Method, published in 1983, I took up a number of criticisms of the book and developed my position on two key issues: (1) the relationship between what I had characterized as Marx's method of critique and empirical historical inquiry, as championed by E. P. Thompson, and (2) the ontology of the social, both in Marx's work and in the social sciences in general. Among others I discuss Thompson, John Urry, Perry Anderson, Hindess and Hirst, and Roy Bhaskar - a nostalgic glimpse of debates in British Marxism at the turn of the '80s.

My first book, long out of print. This is the first edition (1979). A second edition was publis... more My first book, long out of print. This is the first edition (1979). A second edition was published in 1983, with a new Afterword. I intend to post the latter separately when I have it scanned.

Surrealism was not merely an artistic movement to its adherents but an “instrument of knowledge,”... more Surrealism was not merely an artistic movement to its adherents but an “instrument of knowledge,” an attempt to transform the way we see the world by unleashing the unconscious as a radical, new means of constructing reality. Born out of the crisis of civilization brought about by World War I, it presented a sustained challenge to scientific rationalism as a privileged mode of knowing. In certain ways, surrealism’s critique of white, Western civilization anticipated many later attempts at producing alternate non-Eurocentric epistemologies.

With MAKING TROUBLE, sociologist and cultural historian Derek Sayer explores what it might mean to take surrealism’s critique of civilization seriously. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, Sayer first establishes surrealism as an important intellectual antecedent to the study of the human sciences today. He then makes a compelling and well-written argument for rethinking surrealism as a contemporary methodological resource for all those who still look to the human sciences not only as a way to interpret the world, but also to change it.

Note: this is a (much) expanded version of my 2015 Goldsmiths Annual Method Lab Lecture "Surrealism and Sociology," previously posted on this site.

My 1987 book The Violence of Abstraction seems still to be cited in debates about historical mate... more My 1987 book The Violence of Abstraction seems still to be cited in debates about historical materialism and Marxist theory. Since it is long out of print, and used copies are listed on amazon at prices ranging from £400 to £999, I thought it might be helpful to make it freely available for download (in three separate files) here.

The two texts included here, written in Canada, New Zealand and Italy between 1999 and 2001, form... more The two texts included here, written in Canada, New Zealand and Italy between 1999 and 2001, formed the core of my book Going Down for Air: A Memoir in Search of a Subject, published by Paradigm Press of Boulder, Colorado in 2004. I remain grateful to Paradigm for taking on so unconventional a work. For the book I added—somewhat reluctantly—an introduction, titled "Walter Benjamin's Cabinet," a set of notes that elucidated many of the literary and artistic allusions in "A Memoir," and a number of family photographs and more recent images taken during the time the texts were being written that seemed, albeit obscurely, to connect with their themes. A shorter version of "In Search of a Subject," shorn of its connections with "A Memoir," was published independently the same year in Theory, Culture and Society under the title " Incognito Ergo Sum: Language, Memory and the Subject."

What I present here is the first, unvarnished version of the two core texts in Going Down for Air. The book, which was neither widely publicized nor reviewed, remains largely unknown to those who are familiar with my other writings, whether in social theory and historical sociology or on Prague and Czech history. Given the content of "A Memoir," whose search for a subject rambles sometimes graphically through sexuality as well as language and memory, some might think this no bad thing. But I regard "In Search of a Subject" as my most sustained—and in its implications, most profound—theoretical meditation of the last two decades. It connects closely with my preoccupations in The Coasts of Bohemia and Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century, works in which I have deliberately kept explicit theorizing to a minimum. It is also indissolubly bound up with what one commentator described as my "autobiographie surréaliste" (a description I took as a compliment). The two texts should stand together, bouncing off one another, as they were originally written.

Philip Corrigan and I published The Great Arch in 1985. It was an iconoclastic book, which met w... more Philip Corrigan and I published The Great Arch in 1985. It was an iconoclastic book, which met with decidedly mixed reviews. The core of the argument, developed through a narrative of English history spanning the tenth to the early twentieth centuries, was this:

"Moral regulation is coextensive with state formation, and state forms are always animated and legitimated by a particular moral ethos. Centrally, state agencies seek to give unitary and unifying expression to what are in reality multifaceted and differential historical experiences of groups within society, denying their particularity. The reality is that bourgeois society is systematically unequal, it is structured along lines of class, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, occupation, locality. States act to erase the recognition and expression of these differences through what should properly be conceived of as a double disruption.

On the one hand, state formation is a totalizing project, representing people as members of a particular community—an “illusory community,” as Marx described it. This community is epitomized as the nation, which claims people’s primary social identification and loyalty (and to which, as is most graphically illustrated in wartime, all other ties are subordinated). Nationality, conversely, allows categorization of “others”—within as well as without (consider the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthyite era in the United States, or Margaret Thatcher’s identification in 1984 of striking miners as “the enemy within”)—as “alien.” This is a hugely powerful repertoire and rhetoric of rule. On the other hand, as Foucault has observed, state formation equally (and no less powerfully) individualizes people in quite definite and specific ways. We are registered within the state community as citizens, voters, taxpayers, ratepayers, jurors, parents, consumers, homeowners—individuals. In both aspects of this representation alternative modes of collective and individual identification (and comprehension), and the social, political and personal practices they could sustain, are denied legitimacy. One thing we hope to show in this book is the immense material weight given to such cultural forms by the very routines and rituals of state.

Articles and chapters by Derek Sayer

Substack, 2024

An unmusicological reflection on the life and times of Richard Strauss.

Canadian Dimension , 2024

A critical anlysis of the stark discrepancy between US and other western states' policies on limi... more A critical anlysis of the stark discrepancy between US and other western states' policies on limiting and/or conditioning supplies of armaments to Israel and Ukraine.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

A discussion of responses to the student protests at Columbia University and elsewhere over the I... more A discussion of responses to the student protests at Columbia University and elsewhere over the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

There are many ways of measuring the evil that Israel has done to Palestinians, both during the d... more There are many ways of measuring the evil that Israel has done to Palestinians, both during the decades of occupation before October 7, and in the ten months since.

But the true measure of our evil lies in the West’s complicity in maintaining Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and in particular, in the support it has offered Israel in its genocidal assault on Gaza in response to October 7.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

As a response to a terrorist attack from an occupied territory, Israel’s Gaza campaign is wholly ... more As a response to a terrorist attack from an occupied territory, Israel’s Gaza campaign is wholly exceptional, at least among Western democracies that claim to be governed by international law—the club to which Israel repeatedly and proudly claims to belong, and on whose behalf, Netanyahu frequently says, it is fighting.

Israel exists in a state of exception, to use the German jurist Carl Schmitt’s concept, in which the rule of law is suspended and the normal rules don’t apply.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taki... more The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taking over, as in The Matrix films. The story of Lavender, Israel's software for identifying human targets for bombing strikes in Gaza, suggests on the contrary that the real danger arises when the awesome data-crunching capacities of AI are put in the hands of human beings.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes during its attack on Israel on October 7. Nevertheless, ... more Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes during its attack on Israel on October 7. Nevertheless, the narrative that Israel mobilized to cement global support for its retaliation in Gaza rested less on the war crimes that actually were committed than on ones that weren’t. The comparison that needs to be made by the international community is not with ISIS or the Holocaust, but rather with the infinitely greater horrors Israel has inflicted on Gaza since October 7, which its Black Sabbath narrative has played an inordinate part in legitimating and enabling.

Canadian Dimension, 2025

The impending famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate, conscious, informed choices, and nobody... more The impending famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate, conscious, informed choices, and nobody in the Israeli or American governments can be in any doubt as to where they are leading. We are on the threshold of a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian problem. Ladies and gentlemen, this way for your ambient genocide.

Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century, 2013

This is the Introduction and Chapter 1 of my 2013 book Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: ... more This is the Introduction and Chapter 1 of my 2013 book Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton University Press). These "deep cuts" are taken from New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations (Vol. 26,No. 2(S)/2018) that was devoted to my work.

The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, 1998

This is the introduction ("Bearings") to my 1998 book The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, tog... more This is the introduction ("Bearings") to my 1998 book The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, together with the closing two sections of Ch. 5 "Modernisms and Modernities" discussing the arts in interwar Prague. The book was published by Princeton University Press. These "deep cuts" are taken from New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations (Vol. 26,No. 2(S)/2018) that was devoted to my work.

Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF, 2015

This is a brief extract from my book Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF (Sage, 2015, pp. 38-... more This is a brief extract from my book Rank Hypocrisies: The Insult of the REF (Sage, 2015, pp. 38-46), dealing with the competence or otherwise of the UK's REF disciplinary sub-panels to undertake meaningful peer review of research outputs. After some introductory remarks I exemplify the range of expertise on the History sub-panel in the last REF, relative to the range of outputs the panelists were required to assess.

I am posting it as a contribution to the debate on Twitter between Dorothy Bishop and Peter Mandler, and in particular in response to Mandler's tweet of 26 November 2018: "I would defend the quality of peer review in REF - both because it is one of the last redoubts of academic self-governance in the funding system - and because the job is just about manageable and I believe generally done well." Professor Mandler was President of the Royal Historical Society from 2012-2016.

Blackwell issued a 2nd edition of The Great Arch in 1991, six years after the original publicatio... more Blackwell issued a 2nd edition of The Great Arch in 1991, six years after the original publication, for which Philip Corrigan and I wrote a postscript responding to various reviews of the book and clarifying and extending its arguments. The 2nd edition had a very small print-run and soon went out of print, so this text is little known. I'm posting a downloadable scan here for anyone interested.

As promised. In this brief afterword to the 2nd ed. of Marx's Method, published in 1983, I took ... more As promised. In this brief afterword to the 2nd ed. of Marx's Method, published in 1983, I took up a number of criticisms of the book and developed my position on two key issues: (1) the relationship between what I had characterized as Marx's method of critique and empirical historical inquiry, as championed by E. P. Thompson, and (2) the ontology of the social, both in Marx's work and in the social sciences in general. Among others I discuss Thompson, John Urry, Perry Anderson, Hindess and Hirst, and Roy Bhaskar - a nostalgic glimpse of debates in British Marxism at the turn of the '80s.

My first book, long out of print. This is the first edition (1979). A second edition was publis... more My first book, long out of print. This is the first edition (1979). A second edition was published in 1983, with a new Afterword. I intend to post the latter separately when I have it scanned.

Surrealism was not merely an artistic movement to its adherents but an “instrument of knowledge,”... more Surrealism was not merely an artistic movement to its adherents but an “instrument of knowledge,” an attempt to transform the way we see the world by unleashing the unconscious as a radical, new means of constructing reality. Born out of the crisis of civilization brought about by World War I, it presented a sustained challenge to scientific rationalism as a privileged mode of knowing. In certain ways, surrealism’s critique of white, Western civilization anticipated many later attempts at producing alternate non-Eurocentric epistemologies.

With MAKING TROUBLE, sociologist and cultural historian Derek Sayer explores what it might mean to take surrealism’s critique of civilization seriously. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, Sayer first establishes surrealism as an important intellectual antecedent to the study of the human sciences today. He then makes a compelling and well-written argument for rethinking surrealism as a contemporary methodological resource for all those who still look to the human sciences not only as a way to interpret the world, but also to change it.

Note: this is a (much) expanded version of my 2015 Goldsmiths Annual Method Lab Lecture "Surrealism and Sociology," previously posted on this site.

My 1987 book The Violence of Abstraction seems still to be cited in debates about historical mate... more My 1987 book The Violence of Abstraction seems still to be cited in debates about historical materialism and Marxist theory. Since it is long out of print, and used copies are listed on amazon at prices ranging from £400 to £999, I thought it might be helpful to make it freely available for download (in three separate files) here.

The two texts included here, written in Canada, New Zealand and Italy between 1999 and 2001, form... more The two texts included here, written in Canada, New Zealand and Italy between 1999 and 2001, formed the core of my book Going Down for Air: A Memoir in Search of a Subject, published by Paradigm Press of Boulder, Colorado in 2004. I remain grateful to Paradigm for taking on so unconventional a work. For the book I added—somewhat reluctantly—an introduction, titled "Walter Benjamin's Cabinet," a set of notes that elucidated many of the literary and artistic allusions in "A Memoir," and a number of family photographs and more recent images taken during the time the texts were being written that seemed, albeit obscurely, to connect with their themes. A shorter version of "In Search of a Subject," shorn of its connections with "A Memoir," was published independently the same year in Theory, Culture and Society under the title " Incognito Ergo Sum: Language, Memory and the Subject."

What I present here is the first, unvarnished version of the two core texts in Going Down for Air. The book, which was neither widely publicized nor reviewed, remains largely unknown to those who are familiar with my other writings, whether in social theory and historical sociology or on Prague and Czech history. Given the content of "A Memoir," whose search for a subject rambles sometimes graphically through sexuality as well as language and memory, some might think this no bad thing. But I regard "In Search of a Subject" as my most sustained—and in its implications, most profound—theoretical meditation of the last two decades. It connects closely with my preoccupations in The Coasts of Bohemia and Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century, works in which I have deliberately kept explicit theorizing to a minimum. It is also indissolubly bound up with what one commentator described as my "autobiographie surréaliste" (a description I took as a compliment). The two texts should stand together, bouncing off one another, as they were originally written.

Philip Corrigan and I published The Great Arch in 1985. It was an iconoclastic book, which met w... more Philip Corrigan and I published The Great Arch in 1985. It was an iconoclastic book, which met with decidedly mixed reviews. The core of the argument, developed through a narrative of English history spanning the tenth to the early twentieth centuries, was this:

"Moral regulation is coextensive with state formation, and state forms are always animated and legitimated by a particular moral ethos. Centrally, state agencies seek to give unitary and unifying expression to what are in reality multifaceted and differential historical experiences of groups within society, denying their particularity. The reality is that bourgeois society is systematically unequal, it is structured along lines of class, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, occupation, locality. States act to erase the recognition and expression of these differences through what should properly be conceived of as a double disruption.

On the one hand, state formation is a totalizing project, representing people as members of a particular community—an “illusory community,” as Marx described it. This community is epitomized as the nation, which claims people’s primary social identification and loyalty (and to which, as is most graphically illustrated in wartime, all other ties are subordinated). Nationality, conversely, allows categorization of “others”—within as well as without (consider the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthyite era in the United States, or Margaret Thatcher’s identification in 1984 of striking miners as “the enemy within”)—as “alien.” This is a hugely powerful repertoire and rhetoric of rule. On the other hand, as Foucault has observed, state formation equally (and no less powerfully) individualizes people in quite definite and specific ways. We are registered within the state community as citizens, voters, taxpayers, ratepayers, jurors, parents, consumers, homeowners—individuals. In both aspects of this representation alternative modes of collective and individual identification (and comprehension), and the social, political and personal practices they could sustain, are denied legitimacy. One thing we hope to show in this book is the immense material weight given to such cultural forms by the very routines and rituals of state.

Substack, 2024

An unmusicological reflection on the life and times of Richard Strauss.

Canadian Dimension , 2024

A critical anlysis of the stark discrepancy between US and other western states' policies on limi... more A critical anlysis of the stark discrepancy between US and other western states' policies on limiting and/or conditioning supplies of armaments to Israel and Ukraine.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

A discussion of responses to the student protests at Columbia University and elsewhere over the I... more A discussion of responses to the student protests at Columbia University and elsewhere over the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

There are many ways of measuring the evil that Israel has done to Palestinians, both during the d... more There are many ways of measuring the evil that Israel has done to Palestinians, both during the decades of occupation before October 7, and in the ten months since.

But the true measure of our evil lies in the West’s complicity in maintaining Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and in particular, in the support it has offered Israel in its genocidal assault on Gaza in response to October 7.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

As a response to a terrorist attack from an occupied territory, Israel’s Gaza campaign is wholly ... more As a response to a terrorist attack from an occupied territory, Israel’s Gaza campaign is wholly exceptional, at least among Western democracies that claim to be governed by international law—the club to which Israel repeatedly and proudly claims to belong, and on whose behalf, Netanyahu frequently says, it is fighting.

Israel exists in a state of exception, to use the German jurist Carl Schmitt’s concept, in which the rule of law is suspended and the normal rules don’t apply.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taki... more The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taking over, as in The Matrix films. The story of Lavender, Israel's software for identifying human targets for bombing strikes in Gaza, suggests on the contrary that the real danger arises when the awesome data-crunching capacities of AI are put in the hands of human beings.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes during its attack on Israel on October 7. Nevertheless, ... more Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes during its attack on Israel on October 7. Nevertheless, the narrative that Israel mobilized to cement global support for its retaliation in Gaza rested less on the war crimes that actually were committed than on ones that weren’t. The comparison that needs to be made by the international community is not with ISIS or the Holocaust, but rather with the infinitely greater horrors Israel has inflicted on Gaza since October 7, which its Black Sabbath narrative has played an inordinate part in legitimating and enabling.

Canadian Dimension, 2025

The impending famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate, conscious, informed choices, and nobody... more The impending famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate, conscious, informed choices, and nobody in the Israeli or American governments can be in any doubt as to where they are leading. We are on the threshold of a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian problem. Ladies and gentlemen, this way for your ambient genocide.

Princeton University Press "Ideas" blog, 2023

A short piece on the life and times of the “Czech writer, publicist, dramatist, painter, illustra... more A short piece on the life and times of the “Czech writer, publicist, dramatist, painter, illustrator, scenographer, caricaturist, translator, diplomat, lawyer, professor, and traveler” (Czech Wikipedia) Adolf Hoffmeister.

Britské listy, 2023

A contribution to a series in Britské listy titled "The Benefits and Burdens of the 'Invisible Su... more A contribution to a series in Britské listy titled "The Benefits and Burdens of the 'Invisible Suitcase': Writing Contemporary History as an Outsider.

Anthropology and Humanism, 2023

This contribution to the special section "100s for Katie" attempts to communicate the depth and b... more This contribution to the special section "100s for Katie" attempts to communicate the depth and breadth of the hatred infecting contemporary America in one hundred words.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

Western leaders seem finally to be waking up to the monstrosity of the horrors Israel has unleash... more Western leaders seem finally to be waking up to the monstrosity of the horrors Israel has unleashed upon Gaza. A discussion of apparent recent shifts in perspectives on the Gaza War.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

This is a revised and updated version of an article published earlier on my Substack (and also po... more This is a revised and updated version of an article published earlier on my Substack (and also posted on academia.edu). The article argues the importance of contextualizing Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7, 2023 and attempts to do so in relation to both Palestinian and Israeli historical “memories.” The war goes on, with no sign of any imminent ending. I hope my piece will be a useful contribution to debate—though it is unlikely to satisfy believers in simple dichotomies of good and evil on either side.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

A discussion of the self-immolation of serving US senior airman Aaron Bushnell as a case of altru... more A discussion of the self-immolation of serving US senior airman Aaron Bushnell as a case of altruistic suicide as extreme protest, reminiscent of the suicide of Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc in Prague in 1969. I conclude that Bushnell's "supreme sacrifice cuts like a knife through the Orwellian doublethink—mass slaughter of innocent civilians is 'self-defense,' the IDF is 'the most moral army in the world'—that allows us to continue to live with what the highest court in the world has described as a plausible genocide.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

A discussion of the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell as the latest in a long history of extreme ... more A discussion of the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell as the latest in a long history of extreme protests, recalling those of Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc in Prague in 1969. I conclude that Bushnell's "supreme sacrifice cuts like a knife through the Orwellian doublethink—mass slaughter of innocent civilians is 'self-defense,' the IDF is 'the most moral army in the world'—that allows us to continue to live with what the highest court in the world, the ICJ, has described as a plausible genocide.

Canadian Dimension, 2024

On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an interim ruling in response t... more On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an interim ruling in response to South Africa’s charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This ruling required Israel to stop its military from engaging in actions contrary to international law, and to take immediate steps to ensure humanitarian aid reaches Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Within 48 hours Canada and other “Western democracies” cut off funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the organization upon which effective provision of aid to Gaza depends.

This is a clarifying moment in modern history—the day the “rules-based international order” that emerged from the ashes of the Second World War was given the coup de grâce, not by its enemies but by its authors. The gloves were off and so were the masks.

Substack, Jan 10, 2024

I have been working on this article, which argues the importance of contextualizing Hamas’s attac... more I have been working on this article, which argues the importance of contextualizing Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7, 2023 and attempts to do so in relation to both Palestinian and Israeli historical “memories,” for the last three months. The war goes on, with no sign of any imminent ending. I thought the day before Israel is brought before the International Court of Justice to defend a charge of genocide in Gaza an appropriate moment to publish what I hope will be a useful contribution to debate—though it is unlikely to satisfy believers in simple dichotomies of good and evil on either side.

Update. A revised version of this article has been published in Canadian Dimension.

Radical Philosophy, 1975

My first published paper, in which Philip Corrigan and I first advanced some of the ideas that we... more My first published paper, in which Philip Corrigan and I first advanced some of the ideas that were to culminate in our collaboration in The Great Arch.

unpublished, 2011

This is the text of the Annual Masaryk Lecture I gave at the Czech Embassy in London on November ... more This is the text of the Annual Masaryk Lecture I gave at the Czech Embassy in London on November 24, 2011. It deals with a group of Czechoslovak exiles in New York and Paris in 1938–1940, focusing in particular on the triangle of Vítězslava Kaprálová, Bohuslav Martinů, and Jiří Mucha.

Response to a questionnaire in Alienist II (Prague, 2018)

Sometimes I prefer images to arguments. The longer story is told in my paper "White Riot-Brexit,... more Sometimes I prefer images to arguments. The longer story is told in my paper "White Riot-Brexit, Trump, and Post-Truth Politics."

An interview with Amanda Swain for the website New Books in History (July 24, 2015) on my book Pr... more An interview with Amanda Swain for the website New Books in History (July 24, 2015) on my book Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century.

Interview with Lisette Allen for expats.cz on Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century