A figure, in the precise sense of one who cares for (cura) — books, works, texts, people, ideas, people, oh people —, one might even say a guardian of ideas and people, persons with ideas, is no longer with us … Most everywhere else, they have already been swallowed by the rise of the salesperson. Or the gallerist, if you prefer the other name with which they go by. Which is no fault of the gallerist as such: after all they are merely living up to their call to play to the gallery. And, it is perhaps of no coincidence that galleries quite possibly bring with them echoes of church porches (gal ..read more

To teach, perchance to dream, aye, there’s the rub Keeping in mind that dreams come to one, envelop one, quite possibly take over one — and not only does one never quite have control over the dream, it might well write itself into one in ways that will always remain beyond one’s knowledge. A dream writing; an unreadable writing; perhaps an invisible writing; or maybe a writing that is awaiting reading. And where the effects of said writing are precisely its traces unveiling itself — waiting to be read. Where perhaps, to teach is to risk being in the realm of the unknown — in the oikos of the ..read more

In The Feather of Ma’at, Fernando rewards the attentive reader who does the heavy lifting to fill in the gaps between his lines for themselves. In this regard, he leaves the authorship and authenticity in making meaning, and meaning-making, to the reader thus rendering us (his readers) a part of his tapestry of loose writings surreptitiously strung together as signposts for the one who chooses to follow him down his ‘rabbit-hole’ (Chen, 2022). The artistic gaps in Fernando’s writing speak to the ‘wounds’ he philosophises in his other seminal collaborations such as in ‘The ..read more

On thinking with… is the transcription of a talk read by Fernando at the Centre for Science & Innovation Studies at UC Davis in 2015. The text certainly has the character of a reading: through closely attending to Stengers’ similarly transcribed talk (2012) Fernando traverses far-reaching themes – testimony, the gift, naming, listening – drawing them into a world made strange again through Stengers’ idea of “thinking with” – as opposed to analyzing or evaluating – notions of scientific progress, justice, and responsibility. All this will make this review rather different from convention ..read more

“Thanks for the American Dream To vulgarize and falsify until The bare lies shine through” –William S. Burroughs, “Thanksgiving Prayer” Vulgarized, falsified, lionized, satirized, vilified, glorified and on and on, the American Dream is many things to many people.  But just what is it? We Americans (excuse me, United Statesians) are known for loving quick and easy answers, and there are none to be found in 100 Years of the American Dream: Representations and Conceptions in American Literature, 1919-2019.  What is to be found, however, is a wealth and variety of reflection on this fr ..read more

  For a literary form as pervasive as the aphorism, it is a great surprise that it is not as widely studied as it is received – and transmitted. With a history that is far-reaching and multi-cultural, the aphorism stands as testament to a particular way of articulating a variety of ideas and thoughts, from the religious to the ethical, from the political to the philosophical. Aphorisms stand as signposts for specific zeitgeists over the span of human history. It is in the context of the aphorism’s largely unattended quality that Andrew Hui attempts to secure a place for it in the scholar ..read more

Where is the place of thought in writing, or reading? Compelled by this question, philosophers since Plato have either ventured or deviated from it in many different ways. Few, however, have paused to reflect upon the journey itself. A rhythmic blend of prose and poetry, Jeremy Fernando’s in fidelity returns to the letters or traces lying behind the trajectory of these utterances, with a meditation on writing and reading as the site of thought. Subtle in its expression and sensitive to the voices that came before, in fidelity considers the space between reading and writing, between the known ..read more

  As its title suggests, Robert Wood’s Suburbanism is centrally concerned with the concept of place as both ideological site and lived experience. These two elements are fused in Wood’s sense of space as deeply connected to one’s personal identity; rooted in words and shaped by the imagination, “my world is a world of suburbs…being from Wembley means being from, about and for those suburbs” (51). However, identity is also conceptualised as fluid and multiple; built and re-built through language and social interactions, constantly renegotiated through the examining of various aspects of t ..read more

Je Me Touche is Fernando tuning into the tradition of thinking – if one may use the word tradition for it, which ever since humans emerged as bipeds with bigger brains, enabled us to deal with the abstract: with imaginative creativity that can go beyond physical limitations and it made humans who they are. The problem, however, is ego; authority has the tendency to seize people with, what might be called, cerebral atrophy Fernando tunes in with the suffering ones, with those whose brains are secretly and silently spasming. He can feel them, the existences of the sites of the walled-in reflexi ..read more

  One of the key difficulties with Chris Murray’s Crippled Immortals is that, like a peculiarly intransigent fist fighter, the book is fairly difficult to pin down. Outwardly a memoir of some description, Crippled Immortals is also (bear with me) part travelogue, part gongfu manual, part self-help guide, part Bildungsroman, part Buddhist teaching, part palace intrigue, part investigative gossip journalism, and (still with me?) contains at least two other biographical narrative strands. All of which is to say, there is no reason for this book not to fall apart under the weight of its ambi ..read more