Month: February 2018

The Camp as Archive

The Camp as Archive

Posted by | Feb 6, 2018 | |

Nation states make refugees and in historical turn, occasionally at least, refugees make nation states. At times – and now is one of them – it can seem as though there is nothing between the eruptive violence of state formation and the slow burn of placelessness without end. Except, of course, entire lives are lived in-between nation states, and have been since the beginning of the twentieth century. A memory of multiple displacements across generations now stretches from the colonial mandate system and the minority treaties through de-colonisation and the Cold War to the permanent refugee camps, urban ghettoes,...

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Fuck Football

Fuck Football

Posted by | Feb 5, 2018 | |

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. This year, for the first time in my life, I didn’t know which teams won their conference championships—who was going to the Big Game—because I hadn’t watched any football on TV, and hadn’t read about it, either. It’s not that I didn’t care, I just didn’t want to observe the slaughter. I wanted to abstain because knew I’d be drawn into my memories of self-slaughter, Augustinian-style, in the confessional mode. But I watched the whole thing, eating chips and guacamole, drinking beer, hoping the Patriots would lose, laughing at the commercials, howling about the missed calls...

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Tune-Yards: I can feel you creep into my private life

Tune-Yards: I can feel you creep into my private life

Posted by | Feb 5, 2018 | , |

Tune-Yards I can feel you creep into my private life 4AD Merrill Garbus is the indie kids’ darling right now.  She’s eclectic, she wears makeup on-stage, she uses odd instrumentation in making her music, and she speaks righteously in her lyrics.  So, yeah, it’s kinda obvious why.  Tune-Yards is the collaborative project between Garbus and Nate Brenner, and their new album is blowing up.  And, I can see why.  Tune-Yards have existed on the periphery of my attention span for a few years now, my nieces (who all have most excellent taste in music) have talked of them.  And,...

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The History of the Gerrymander

The History of the Gerrymander

Posted by | Feb 5, 2018 | |

We live in an era in the United States where, in many states, politicians are picking their voters, not the other way around.  This is because in most states, the boundaries of congressional districts are in the hands of politicians, and the majority of the party in the state house has more or less carte blanche to manipulated these boundaries as they see fit.  In most democracies, this is handled by an independent commission to avoid just this kind of silliness.  When left in the hands of politicians, I can see how the temptation to gerrymander is too great to...

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Jewish Tourism, or, I never cared very much for the Holocaust – Part V

Jewish Tourism, or, I never cared very much for the Holocaust – Part V

Posted by | Feb 2, 2018 | , |

As we leave, the journalist in me wants to know how Victor felt about all this. How his students felt who did the March of Death the week before. I ask Loreta to ask him. His response is bland and avoids the “feeling” question. I ask this question a few times and each time he says nothing. I tell Loreta, insistently and in a very American Jew pushy way she later chides me about, what do the children feel? The Victor finally relents and says “They feel pity for the Jews and anger at the Germans; they feel pity...

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