Simon During is at the University of Melbourne. His books include Against Democracy: Literary Experience in the Age of Emancipations (2012) and Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (2002).
Simon During
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Writing on Public Books
Stop Defending the Humanities
Whatever things the humanities do well, it is beginning to look as if promoting themselves is not among them.
Conjuring Anthropology’s Future
I suspect that I was invited to review Magic’s Reason because it is largely about stage magic and stage magicians, a topic on which I once wrote a book myself …
Conjuring Anthropology’s Future
I suspect that I was invited to review Magic’s Reason because it is largely about stage magic and stage magicians, a topic on which I once wrote a book myself …
More Orwell
No political event in memory has been as shocking and bewildering as Donald Trump’s election. It doesn’t seem to belong to our history, the history we had and thought we would go on having. How to …
Stop Hyping Academic Freedom
Universities may be among the oldest of our institutions, but they have changed significantly during the millennium or so since they were established. Roughly speaking, the history of the European university proceeds through four phases. First, the medieval ecclesiastical-juridical phase in which, first in Italy and gradually across Europe, universities were granted and then claimed […]
Stop Defending the Humanities
Whatever things the humanities do well, it is beginning to look as if promoting themselves is not among them. I say this after having read widely across the rapidly accumulating literature in defense of the humanities, to which this book loosely belongs. Strictly speaking, The Humanities and Public Life is a record of a seminar on […]
Calcutta’s Via Negativa
Amit Chaudhuri is, as is perhaps not widely enough recognized, the author of five remarkable novels, as well as a collection of short stories, a book of poetry, a work of academic literary criticism, and a volume of critical reviews and essays. (He is also a musician and composer of some note.) At one time […]
How Did Susan Sontag Get to be So Famous?
In our time, how many American critics have been celebrities? How many have had the kind of name recognition that allows them to be casually mentioned in a mainstream Hollywood movie, or enough star power to be featured (along with their apartments) in People, the magazine which pretty much invented today’s celebrity culture? Not many. […]
