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Alecs Ștefănescu

catileptic@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 1 month ago

i'm an activist thriving on layers and layers of affinity for shades of nuance. i have a life-long love for the Weird / Uncanny / Unheimlich.

chaos.social/@catileptic

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Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things (Hardcover, 1997, Random House)

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, …

This is the most emotionally intense book I have ever read. The prose itself amplified the identification, the empathy, the solidarity I felt with the characters. Even though the narrator is of the "omniscient" type, the prose changes the tone, the assumed lens of the narrator as it shifts to focus on different characters. It's as though the "eye" of the reader becomes temporarily merged with each character, with their ways of seeing the world.

If someone reads & enjoys this book, I also recommend reading Pankaj Mishra's "Run and Hide".

Two lines of exploration fused into one book

The way I understand it, Post-Europe explores two questions: 1. What is the future of philosophy in Asia? 2. How can European philosophy transcend its roots in colonialism / violence / imposition and become relevant once more as a lens through which we can reason about the interplay between technology and society?

I think that the answers Yuk Hui proposes to these two questions are the following: 1. Asian philosophy needs to go through a process of individuation of thought. For this, it needs internal tension, an understand of its roots, counter-points to stand against and, crucially, a creative outlook. 2. Post-European philosophy can come from a Europe that leaves behind the obsession with nationality, and instead assumes the embodied position of the "homeless"/ "nation-less" person / people.