Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • So long and thanks for all the comics

    So long and thanks for all the comics

      The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note, when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat. Leaning her breast against the reedy shore, thus sang her first and last, and sang no more. Clearly, during the course of his career writing comics, Alan Moore was far from silent, so it would be sublimely ludicrous to Read more

  • A mysterious semantic plenitude

    A mysterious semantic plenitude

    Yugen Blakrok is a rapper who’s been gaining some notoriety. She had a verse in the Black Panther soundtrack, she’s shared a stage with Public Enemy, she’s released a collab with Copywrite. I wish her all the success in the world, but I’m also quite happy to report that she’s not likely to trouble the Read more

  • The challenge of generosity

    The challenge of generosity

    Terminology is getting plethoric in questions of gender and sexual identity, perhaps excessively so, given that a significant proportion of the diverse theoretical thinking on such topics sees the taxonomic categories those terms refer to as matters of social construction, rather than ‘things’ that are ‘out there in the world’. LGB begat LGBT, LGBT begat Read more

  • Putting food in its place

    Putting food in its place

    A sense of collective memory is crucial to most people’s sense of self; few seem as happy as those who know where they are from. I’ve always had a slightly difficult time finding out this ostensibly simple fact about myself: on my father’s side it could be Istanbul, or Santiago in Chile, but I feel Read more

  • A cunning naïveté

    A cunning naïveté

    Kingston-upon-Hull is one of those cities that likes to celebrate its dialect. When I first visited, arriving in a small, wooden-hulled, retired fishing trawler, we went to drink off our sea legs at the Minerva. This is an iconic pub overlooking the marina, one of the first sights to greet anyone reaching Hull up the Read more

  • Knowledge, from extraction to production

    Knowledge, from extraction to production

    The approach to Giles Gilbert Scott’s menacing Ministry of Truth building in Cambridge is designed to diminish and belittle the pedestrian penitent, to crush their spirit with the giant phallus of authority that rises above its forbidding entrance, looming over the city like a threat. However, if one is forewarned that this ‘magnificent erection’ (as Read more