What I highlighted in most of March and April, 2021
I've been working on a long form writing project since mid March, so my writing, reading, watching and listening has been different from normal. Here's some of what has stuck with me in the last few weeks.
Articles
Pankaj Mishra on Edward Said in the New Yorker
“To be a Levantine is to live in two or more worlds at once without belonging to either,” He noted that Said’s preoccupation with representations rather than with material interests, and his prioritizing of racial inequities over class and gender oppressions, had proved especially useful to upwardly mobile academics who came to American universities from the developing world. Politicized young people today are unlikely to confine themselves to Foucault-style discourse analysis when they confront the crushing realities of inequality, gutted public services, mainstream racism, and environmental calamity. Naipaul, in Said’s view, had acquired his gilded Western reputation as a truthteller about the developing world because he elided the West’s damaging presence in it, while depicting Asians and Africans as intellectually helpless and politically confused.
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Disaster researchers call this phenomenon “elite panic.” When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. But if we trust in people’s better angels, give them honest information and allow them a bit of autonomy, perhaps they will accomplish more than we can imagine. Faced with a genuine crisis, we just might surprise ourselves—again.
Min Jin Lee on how reading taught her how to write about her immigrant family
On the decline of Western left-leaning culture in India and the rise of nativisit, Hindutva, culture and politics
As we proceed in the 21st century India and the world will confront two simultaneous dynamics: modernisation of the nation-state and the rise of indigenous non-Western cultural and political movements, and further international global connections and coalitions. Instead of a homogeneous world dominated by Western “Davos Man,” what we will see is a world with difficult to define texture and protean affinities which might seem ideologically nonsensical.
Arundhati Roy on India's second COVID wave. Which is harrowing to watch from a distance. And even scarier as my family members fall sick and deal with the worst of the worst.
A good essay pointing out some of the core tensions in the new right coalition and how difficult they will be to reconcile
I did not know about Keynes's coauthors, like Joan Robinson
Movies
TV Shows
- I watched 3 seasons of Billions. And I'm not sure they were very good at all.
- I watched S1 of The Bureau and liked it, but didn't fall in love like a lot of people online seem to have.
- We're almost done with our rewatch of Mad Men. It goes off the rails a bit near the end.
Podcasts
- Alison Gopnik on Ezra Klein is always great. As I come up to the edge of parenting in the next few years, I'm looking forward to a lot more play in my day-to-day life. For more "explore" mode rather than "exploit" mode.
