Category: Book Review
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Into the Mirror World
Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (2023), begins with Klein sharing an incident on social media where she was mistaken for Naomi Wolf, a feminist thinker who shifted her views to becoming a conspiracy theorist and engaging with very right-wing thinkers and public figures. This all took place around when…
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Whispers of Vanity: Unmasking the Hopes and Dreams in Wilde’s Classic
Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray “He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.” The Picture of Dorian Gray is an aesthetic book that is a treat for anyone who enjoys philosophy, literature, and the arts. The book goes into all…
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Reviewing Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological
As the title suggests, Timothy Morton’s Being Ecological is a book about ecology. However, in a sense, the book tries to do more than simply presenting a philosophical, anthropological, or biological perspective on ecology. It tries to give an expansive critique on the way in which a lot of ecological thought is structured, and why…
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What You See, When You Close Your Eyes
Book Review of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I would have liked to begin this story in the manner of a fairy tale. I would have liked to write: ‘Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself, and who was in need of…
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Reviewing Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
While discussing unfortunate misrepresentations within British society, Owen Jones’ Chavs: Dehumanization of the Working Class (2011) is highly applicable to the media coverage of working-class people in many Western societies. Jones uses the term “chav” (2011) as symbolic of the most common portrayal of the working class – comparable to the derogatory Dutch epithet, “tokkie”.…
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Wie is er bang voor Simone de Beauvoir (boek) – recensie
Deze recensie is geschreven in de vorm van een briefwisseling door Cas Buijs en Esmée van den Wildenberg. Samen bespreken zij een aantal centrale thema’s en vragen die in het boek aan bod komen, waaronder of de De Tweede Sekse een psychoanalyserend werk is en welke rol De Beauvoirs persoonlijke leven speelt.
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Going Nowhere, Slow (book) – review
In Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression Danish scholar Mikkel Krause Frantzen studies the psychopathology of depression as it is represented in four major cultural works of the past 30 years. For Frantzen, depression is not “just” an individual psychopathology – albeit with moral, political, and economic implications – but a fundamental…
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Waarom de liefde eindigt (boek) – recensie
Scharrel, twarrel (twijfelscharrel), kwarrel (kwaliteitsscharrel), mingle (mixed en single), rela (relatie), prela (pre-relatie), een situationship,seksrelatie, of een open relatie, fuckbuddy, friends with benefits, zipless fuck, hook up, casual sex, cybersex of sexting – wie zich vandaag op de liefdesmarkt begeeft heeft haast evenveel keus aan soorten (seksuele) relaties als aan merken hagelslag in de schappen…
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A Theory of the Aphorism (book) – review
As Andrew Hui remarks in the introduction to A Theory of the Aphorism, the aphorism is a literary and philosophical format that has remained “curiously understudied” (1). There exist plenty of studies on the historico-methodological characteristics of, for example, the dialogue, the treatise and the novel, but the aphorism, despite its persistent ubiquity throughout the…
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Hoe schizofrenie zich redt (boek) – recensie
Hoewel ‘waanzinnig’ een overwegend positieve connotatie heeft, wordt ‘waanzin’ veelal gebruikt om aan te geven dat iets geen goed idee is. Daarnaast kan ‘waanzin’ ook verwijzen naar een psychische staat die meestal begrepen wordt als onwenselijk, abnormaal en ziek. Hoe schizofrenie zich redt plaatst waanzin in een ander licht, namelijk ook als productief in plaats…