Ray of Truth

FACE IS ETHICAL

“So, too, I wonder if one can speak of a look turned toward the face, for the look is knowledge, perception. I think rather that access to the face is straightaway ethical. You turn yourself toward the other as toward an object when you see a nose, eyes, a forehead, a chin, and you can […]

Never Ceasing Enemy

“Truth is that which hurries on the breakup of the colonialist regime; it is that which promotes the emergence of the nation; it is all that protects the natives, and ruins the foreigners. In this colonialist context there is no truthful behaviour: and the good is quite simply that which is evil for “them.” Thus […]

THE SOVIET MAN

“Homo sovieticus isn’t just Russian, he’s Belarusian, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Kazakh. Although we now live in separate countries and speak different languages, you couldn’t mistake us for anyone else. We’re easy to spot! People who’ve come out of socialism are both like and unlike the rest of humanity.” Swetlana Alexievich

Little Histories

“I’m interested in little people. The little, great people, is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. In my books these people tell their own, little histories, and big history is told along the way. We haven’t had time to comprehend what al-ready has and is still happening to us, we just need […]

Life is Response to a Call

“My life cannot then be reproduced by a narrative: in as much as it has been actually lived, it lies without the scope of my present concrete thought and can only be recaptured as particles irradiated by flashes of memory. Nor is my life in the notes jotted down day by day and making up […]

Deaf To The Other

“In enjoyment I am absolutely for myself. Egoist without reference to the Other, I am alone without solitude, innocently egoist and alone. Not against the Others, not ‘as for me…’—but entirely deaf to the Other, out-side of all communication and all refusal to communicate—without ears, like a hungry stomach” E. Levinas

THE SUBTERRANEAN STEAM

“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean steam of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped […]

For the Other

“The activity of speaking robs the subject of its central position; it is the depositing of a subject with-out refuge. The speaking subject is no longer by and for itself; it is for the other.” E. Levinas

Eviction-facing Indian Catholics to fight Muslim charity’s claims

Goans oppose tourism project near 16th century basilica