The Insidious Faux-Feminism of Barbie
It wasn’t until Barbie left Barbie Land that the proverbial needle skipped for me. I didn’t watch the Barbie Movie expecting a feminist film. I never imagined the need to critique it as such. But the Barbie Movie has proclaimed itself a feminist film, and so must be critiqued in this light.
“Pages on Fire”: The Ends of Cărtărescu
Apocalypse might be what it means to wake up from dreams, or to close, for the last time, a book. Apocalypse might be the name for the self’s end, or the dissolution of the world into memory.
“Keep the Dream”: Science Fiction and the Desanctification of Space
When it comes to the most expensive business in—and beyond—the world . . . no one ever seems to ask the cheapest of questions: Is it worth it?
The goblin arrives through people, not in front of them. More poltergeist than monster. We can’t know its specific form, but we see it appear—fluidly, over and over again—in what we fear, and where that fear ignites into inspiration.
I wanted salvation without the fall; I wanted art to save me from life.
Messina’s writing is bleak and tender and honest and is not trying to persuade me of anything, least of all that things will work out.
“Within Spitting Distance of the Exit”
Some people will go to the ends of the earth for closure, while others maintain until their last, hypertensive breath that it doesn’t exist.
The coven is not only a ritual meeting of practicing witches—it is an aspirational design for the literary establishment.
The Dissenters is not a novel of exile: It is an Egyptian novel in English.
Where in the World is Michel Foucault? On Remigiusz Ryziński’s Foucault in Warsaw
Perhaps Foucauldian controversies are a new annual tradition.