Burning Peak Oil
Reflections on why we ride.
Paul Jaussen
“At Least They’ve Got Stars on Them”: Fantasy, Cinema, and Wes Anderson
Two short films cast a long shadow over the history of cinema. The first is the famous 1895 Lumière Brothers’ “L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat,” a mere fifty seconds of documentary footage. Through a static, single shot, we watch a train approaching from a distance, chugging from the center-right of the frame […]
Radical Tragedy, Subversive Comedy: On Milbank, Žižek, and The Monstrosity of Christ
Paul Jaussen reviews Žižek and Milbank’s THE MONSTROSITY OF CHRIST.
Teaching the Universal Subject: A Manifesto
In this essay, Paul Jaussen argues that discipleship is a valuable model for education, one which avoids the common traps of ideological or market-driven pedagogies.
Lighting the Way: A Review of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
The Road1, with its impersonal depictions of cannibalism and murder in the aftermath of an unknown apocalypse, is one of the most spiritual novels written in recent years. The contrast may appear stark: how can the brutally physical reveal that which we tend to conceive of as transcendent? There is a long-standing assumption, at least […]
Disciplining Borat
Review: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Directed by Larry Charles. Dune Entertainment, 2006. 84 minutes. On a recent trip to New York, I spotted a subway poster for public safety. It read something like “There are 16 million eyes in New York City, and we are counting on all […]
Following Žižek to the End, or The Pleasures (and Perils) of Metaphysical Suicide
Review: Žižek! Directed by Astra Taylor. Zeitgeist, 2005. 71 minutes. The Parallax View. By Slavoj Žižek. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. 434 pp. Slavoj Žižek should make everyone very, very uncomfortable. The irony of the situation is, he doesn’t. Indeed, Žižek, a large, bearded beast of a man, who talks incessantly, particularly when he is under the eye of […]