A series of sketches written in 1924 during an ocean crossing from New York to Tilbury, “Passage to England” was published only in 1998 by the Thomas Wolfe Society and is hardly Wolfe’s most popular or most accomplished work. Nonetheless I always felt that Passage to England had something unique and idiosyncratic and that despite a certain a…[Read more]

No creo que haya mejor ocasión que este homenaje alcalaíno al maestro Alberto Blecua para vencer las reticencias y dudas del neófito que, en palabras de Márquez Villanueva, ha de pisar por vez primera los “senderos de alto riesgo” por los que camina el Libro de buen amor. Por motivo de mi admiración y reconocimiento al homenajeado, voy a dejarme…[Read more]

Persian literature used to be visibly worldly when Persian was a lingua franca in a vast space from Balkan to China. With the British colonialism in the India and the rise of nation states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Persian lost its status and became more national in various contexts. In Iran it only got worsened with sanctions,…[Read more]

This is a particular work focusing on an aspect of the Catholic Church in Europe, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concerning the rise of democracy during the so-called Modernist Crisis. I view the Modernist phenomenon as an historical lens through which to understand the politics, often characterized by artful and dishonest…[Read more]

En este artículo sobre teoría narrativa evolucionista releemos y comentamos algunos textos y nociones clave de la teoría de Charles Darwin, en el ‘Origen de las Especies’ y ‘El Origen del Hombre’, a la luz de la sociobiología cognitiva con…[Read more]

The concept of Bahujan literature is based on the sum total of the literary contribution of a writer. Hence, it also has place for Dwij writers with an unflinching commitment to the cause of the deprived communities. As we have been arguing in the columns of FORWARD Press, the concept of Bahujan literature is a huge umbrella, under which Dalit,…[Read more]

As a new theory in the humanities and social studies, Queer Theory, as a broad theory encompassing any understanding that is anti-normativity and anti-fixed identity, is often applied to sexual matters. Whereas, others have discussed Queer Theory from the perspective of Identity Politics in sexual matters, I discuss Queer Theory from a…[Read more]

After a general philosophical introduction that outlines my current thinking, I advance the premise that the inverse of traditional Western philosophical understanding, that is, that the concept of divinity as uniquely created through human culture denotes the specific unique status of humanity, and is sustainable in light of contemporary…[Read more]

Al tratar de disolver la neta separación entre una mente racional y la materia inerte abogada por el dualismo Cartesiano, el monismo lucha por reunificar estas distintas realidades ontológicas. Tal como para Claude Lévi-Strauss y Baruch Spinoza, esa dicha unificación no puede prescindir de la trascendencia de la mente humana como locus del pen…[Read more]

In 2000 a Stanford professor raped me. My rape is now older than I was. (I’m still not as old as he was.) The more time passes the more I’m struck by Stanford’s apathy and fecklessness about sexual violence. I wrote a letter asking Stanford to stop compounding the abuse and to reckon with its rape culture. This letter—including the “Incomp…[Read more]

Adolf Loos is one of the few figures that Wittgenstein explicitly named as an influence on his thought. Loos’s influence has been debated in the context of determining Wittgenstein’s relation to modernism, as well as in attempts to come to terms with his work as an architect. This paper looks in a different direction, examining a remark in whi…[Read more]

Their words might have been different but both Ambedkar and Phule talked of the slavery of women and Shudras and Ati-shudras, their liberation and their unity. The concept of ‘Bahujan Literature’ was born to highlight the need to explore the socio-cultural foundation of the liberation and unity of Bahujans.

there is a broad unanimity among Hin…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: ´El Gran Diseño´, libro de Stephen Hawking y Leonard Mlodinow (Bantam, 2010) se propone responder científicamente a algunas cuestiones que en tiempos pasados se explicaban mediante mitos de creación: por qué existe el universo, y por qué es como es. Nos centramos aquí en una de sus propuestas más controvertidas, la teoría d…[Read more]

This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I’m sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the “uncanny body politic,” the uncanny valley, “dystopian poetics,” what it means…[Read more]

The Dream Theory in Theaetetus is Plato’s generalised account of Presocratic elements. Evidence for this given from Laws, Phaedo, Timaeus, and through a comparison with Aristotle’s account.

Spanish Abstract: Las actuales concepciones de la psicología sobre la interiorización de la interacción deben algo, o mucho, a Sigmund Freud. Hay precedentes muy notables, como Nietzsche, que formulan la constitución del sujeto mediante la interiorización, pero la teoría de Freud sobre la complejidad de la mente se basa en gran medida en la inter…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: En su teoría sobre la interacción estratégica, Erving Goffman muestra cómo las dinámicas de control de la información y de la infiltración de informantes en las líneas enemigas no son únicamente una cuestión de espionaje internacional o de servicios secretos. La vida cotidiana, tal como nos la desvela el análisis de Goffman, e…[Read more]

Book review

In “Hwabyung Fragments” the Korean American poet Seo-Young Chu uses pieces of Korean mythology, family lore, DMZ iconography, speculative lyricism, allusions to Plato’s Symposium (the figure of one’s missing other half), and allusions to chimerism, mosaicism, and twinning to explore generational trauma, Korean division, postmemory han, the…[Read more]

A pesar que puga semblar una mica pueril, crec que he de començar aquest treball amb una asseveració rotunda: el Cancionero general no es va editar a València per casualitat. Les edicions de 1511 i 1514 no van ser solament el resultat del moltes vegades problemàtic pelegrinatge vital dels erudits literaris de l’època que, com Hernando del Castil…[Read more]