Interventions

Welcome to Interventions, an experimental space where authors rehearse new ideas, reframe questions, or play unbridled within Arcade’s field of the humanities in the world. These short posts embrace the incomplete, the imperfect, and the indeterminate, but they may become much more: for example, the record of a thinker’s turn toward a new paradigm or the rough draft of a chapter in a new book. Rapid publication and immediate responses permit Interventions to foster conversation. The tone of the posts may range from personal to political, while maintaining a critical edge. 

Published regularly, Interventions are often freestanding contributions to Arcade, but some may join our feature called Colloquies. Inquiries and submissions are received by the editor of Interventions.

 

Resisting Tragedy and Satire in Don Quixote
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As I teach Don Quixote once again, I am struck by how difficult it is to avoid converting the book into either a tragedy or a satire.  Auerbach should provide a remedy, but his discussion of the novel's "gay wisdom" does not seem to speak to students.
dark, dark, darkling
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I got interested, for obvious reasons, in reading Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush". There is a discussion about the poem, initiated by Robert Pinsky, going on at Slate's "The Fray" at the moment.
Dark Was the Night
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In 2001, Napster introduced the world to file-sharing, and ever since the media has been filled with feverish stories about the music market's decline. Indeed, no one sells 10 million or even 5 million copies of a single album anymore; that said, some success stories have been ignored. Many artists in the independent sector are experiencing unprecedented popularity.
Thoughts on Reading Joseph Levenson
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Contrary to the menacing spectacle of national chauvinism associated with China today, Confucian universal values embodied by the idea of tianxia (all under heaven) stem from an ethical scheme of ritualistic empire.  This global view based on cultural improvement is a far cry from the image of modern empires bent on acquiring territories, markets and resources. 
mind your fictions
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The incapacity of the mind–or rather of the Western mind culturally trained to succeed and strive–to conceive of reality. We are not taught to see what is, but to dream, long, hope, desire, strive, reach for a perfection (physical, intellectual, financial, social) that does not exist outside of our projections and the standards of the society where we are born.
simplistic linguistics versus the simplicity of language
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Dictation implies a separation between “me” and the writing itself. I had to re-imagine what the writing life would look like. Suddenly I was speaking my text to someone. I was externalizing a step of the process that had been so far silently kept within. We were now two in the room, and at the beginning there was no obvious agreement on what should be typed on the screen.
Dialogue with Montaigne
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“Il faut souffrir doucement les loix de nostre condition. Nous sommes pour vieillir, pour affoiblir, pour estre malades, en despit de toute medecine."

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