Tag: exotica
Revisiting 20 years of Trinkets part 7
Here was a curio – a blogpost filler from September 2005 – a negative review of Critique of Exotica by Narcus Breem in 2001, with my reply at…
Built on silt, but gold.
Calcutta Research Group Talk JH and questions for the Making and Unmaking of Cities series of CRG, done March 29 2025 (but the intro promised Samata Biswas but…
Nancy Cunard
There are many dimenesions of Nancy Cunard, born on this day, 10 March, in 1896. She wrote “These were the hours”, about her publishing imprint, through which she…
Crit of exotica soundtrack
https://dekorder.bandcamp.com/album/like-a-packed-cupboard-but-quite
Mixed Metaphors in a text
I started to code the mixed metaphors in the first page of Critique of Exotica (because I do this for other texts and it helps understand them) but…
Greater Death’s Head Hawk Moth [acherontia lachesis fabricius, aka the bee robber] comes to visit
This critter got tangled up in the bookshelf after entering the apartment tonight. Huge thing it is, 9 cm with its wings folded. Am about to let it…
Locomotives
Walter Benjamin could be the Johnny Cash of social theory… Vincente Raphael had posted this relic from the Benjamin archive – a note on Marx which Benjamin wrote…
Arabian Nights: abriged too far (longest-kept trinket-exotica)
The 1821 Galland version of the Thousand and One Nights. “slightly abridged” with eight full colour drawings by Joan Kiddel-Monroe. 1965 reprint, Dent & Sons. …
A Rhinoceros in the Library: Marx’s Sources on India
Read on here: marx-for-chandernagorechicagoDownload
Raoul Coutard
Raoul Coutard was camera-person on nearly all Godard’s major 1960s films, including Á bout de souffle, Bande à Part, Le Mépris, Alphaville, La Chinoise, and Weekend, and then…
Pirate Reboot – Occupy Madagascar
Graeber, David. 2023. Pirate Enlightenment, Or the real Libertalia. London: Allen Lane. In this entertaining book, the world of early eighteenth century Madagascar piracy, and the women they…
hypnotextiality syndrome
starting to see text everywhere, been editing other peoples work much.
Against Charity
I wrote my first book as a critique of charity work in Kolkata, India. I attempted a critique of western ‘charity’ workers helping those they saw as the…
Letter to Jane
Lecture on Jean-luc Godard’s film “Letter to Jane” – much to discuss at TDTU.
Soapbox: on slips and trips.
In the business of selling cultures for quids, and other random translations Once upon a long ago, there was a time when I was more rebelliously young, and…
Trinkets in Defoe
Reading Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins’ 2013 book A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism (Global Asias), Oxford: Oxford University Press, and seeing after Robinson, D…
Hybridity in music – for Cello.
This was a surprise, at the least: Solo Cello String Ensemble (4-4-4-3-2) c. 25 minutes https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5c04v6g3 “Clifford uses the word to describe ‘a discourse that is…
1988 fieldwork with Patrick Swayze.
Full story here: The Rumour of Calcutta
Mela- Alexander
An article just appeared on mela which I had not seen when writing about mela films in Global South Asia on screen, but it looks pretty much on…
Critique of Marxist Musicology (lack in the Blak, Politics in the Lyrics, ears in the fears, bound to sound…)
Just catching up with critical appreciations. This: jazeel2005
Opening books
Good to be on the same page as Steve Redhead. Thanks Tara Brabazon, from her book “The University of Google: Education in the (Post) Information Age” By Tara…
Orientalism for kids – again
Am gearing up for another round of kiddy tv and hoping there are new programmes since the mind worms of Iggle Piggle and Peppa Pig did their damage. This…