"Equality or Dignity?" Christopher Warley explores the tension at the heart of Erich Auerbach's work alongside recent biographies of Derrida and Spenser.

In my house live a literary critic and a historian. They do not always get along. Aside from differing views on paint colors, dinner choices, and departure times, a regular dispute erupts concerning verb tenses: present tense or past tense? When you write about a book, do you describe its action in the present tense (Hamlet whines) or in the past tense (Hamlet whined)?

I am no big fan of conspiracy theories. I think all kinds of myths have their deep flaws. Rather I believe that often genuine mistakes are made and those mistakes become crimes after a while.

My friend works in the world’s weirdest building. It’s all made of grass, it has no walls or ceiling, and it’s full of people making financial transactions.

From the recent postmodern history we have seen that the old ways of dealing with violent conflicts through the single state power proved to be in most cases violent and tragic. In the new multi-polar world of the 21st century, accepting diversity and equality of nations becomes a more important concept.

A student and a reader recently asked me: why is essentialism bad? Uhg, I thought, how do you answer that? But it is a fair and reasonable and nagging question, and I will give it a try.

Joshua Landy just posted a very interesting blog entry here, partly on how the fallacy of conversion tends to work in Derridean argument.  I am no longer enchanted by Derrida -- I've been... deconverted? deprogrammed? -- but I was prompted to defend him in the comments to that post. 

This post over at the prolific philosopher Levi Bryant's blog talks about something close to my heart.

Want some writer to have said something, but having trouble finding it in her texts?  Not a problem!  Just add a dash of oudelogistics.

So the funny thing about Shakespeare, you will have noticed, is that there are a lot of editions of his plays. A lot. A LOT.