Recent Articles
Jews, Lice, and History
The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., exhumes the bodies with minimum ceremony, forcing acknowledgment of the facticity, specificity, and proximity of genocide. Always in the air is the fraught question of exceptionalism; but pressing as…Humanitarianism as a Politics of Life
What sort of life is implicitly or explicitly taken into account in the political work of humanitarian intervention? This is the question that interests me.On the Ikeaization of France
“Faites le plein d’idées!” the French arm of the Swedish home superstore Ikea’s enormous product range enthusiastically encourages the consumer. As one proceeds through the store, one is confronted by a series of stagelike tableaux suggesting different…Penetrating Markets, Fortifying Fences: Advertising, Consumption, and Violent National Conflict
On some occasions media become noticeably important not only as sources of information but also as chief definers of such events as national catastrophes. National broadcasting institutions express, or construct and enforce, the “national mood.”Islamism and the Politics of Fun
Drawing mainly on the experience of Muslim states, notably postrevolution Iran, I explore why Islamists are so distinctly apprehensive of the expression of “fun” — a preoccupation most people in the world seem to take for granted.