Review | ZETEO

Torture: Fact and Fiction

October 7, 2013 by Jennifer Dean

Torture: Fact and Fiction By Jennifer Dean A review of Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination, edited by Michael Flynn and Fabiola F. Salek (Columbia University Press, 2012) [click for pdf] Screening Torture, a collection of essays exploring portrayals of torture in film and television after 9/11¸ includes work by a handful of film scholars (Chris Berry, Elizabeth Goldberg, Livia Alexander) and several academics from other disciplines (sociologists, political scientists, historians, American studies scholars, and psychologists). […]

Categories: Review • Tags: documentaries, movies, torture

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Photographing the Soul

October 1, 2013 by Walter Cummins

Photographing the Soul A review of The Iconic Photographs by Steve McCurry (Phaidon reprint edition, 2012; first published by Art and Architecture, 2011) By Walter Cummins [click for pdf] Two-thirds into Steve McCurry’s Iconic Photographs I thought I was encountering a group of happy men, their smiling faces lined in a row. Then I realized those smiles were painted-on masks, not real expressions. The photo’s title is “Young Wadair Men, Niger 1986,” and the explanatory note at the end of […]

Categories: Review • Tags: National Geographic, photography, poverty, soul

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The Chosen Comedians

September 9, 2013 by Daniel Taub

The Chosen Comedians Jewish Joking from Nineteenth Century Europe to Twenty-First Century Israel By Daniel Taub A review of No Joke: Making Jewish Humor by Ruth R. Wisse (Princeton University Press, 2013) Image—also entitled “No Joke”—is from Drew Friedman, the author of The Fun Never Stops, Old Jewish Comedians, and More Old Jewish Comedians. The sketch, or “visual comment” appeared in Vanity Fair’s “VF Daily sketchbook” on July 29, 2008. [click for pdf] Have you heard the one about the […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Auschwitz, comedy, George W. Bush, Holocaust, humor, Israel, Jews

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The Unfeathered Bird

September 3, 2013 by Ed Mooney

Katrina van Grouw’s Picked Bones, Plucked Hens, Plumed Skeletons By Edward F. Mooney Review of The Unfeathered Bird by Katrina van Grouw (Princeton University Press, 2013). Click for pdf. I have always pictured birds in flight, singly or in flocks, or tending eggs; regal swans, slowly drifting, or birds swooping down for a fish or a mouse. But elegant drawings of birds undressed—bones picked dry, neither dead nor alive? I’ve never seen the likes of these—inhabitants of a nether […]

Categories: Review • Tags: birds

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After von Trotta’s Arendt

June 21, 2013 by William Eaton

Notes after seeing Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt (and doing a little reading) Version 2.0: As revised 27 June 2013 Taking clues from Hannah Arendt (2013), directed by Margarethe von Trotta; screenplay by Pam Katz and von Trotta; cinematographer Caroline Champetier; Barbara Sukowa in the title role. [Click for pdf] By William Eaton (1) In seeing plastered across Paris posters advertising Hannah Arendt, I wondered how one could possibly make an engaging feature film about this philosopher, focused […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Eichmann, ethics, Hannah Arendt, Heidegger, Holocaust, Kant, New Yorker, philosophy, thinking

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Eating Intelligent Beings

April 6, 2013 by Walter Cummins

Eating Intelligent Beings By Walter Cummins A review of: Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies by Margo DeMello (Columbia University Press, 2012) Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations by Alasdair Cochrane (Columbia University Press, 2012) Without Offending Humans: A Critique of Animal Rights by Élisabeth de Fontenay (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) Click for the pdf. Many studies in recent years have demonstrated that animals—from mammals to birds and insects—possess much greater intelligence, problem-solving […]

Categories: Review • Tags: animal rights, animals, Descartes, vegetarianism

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Environmental Philosophy and the Question of Origins

March 21, 2013 by William Eaton

Environmental Philosophy and the Question of Origins By Ashok Karra Review of Biogea, by Michel Serres. Translated by Randolph Burks (Univocal, 2012). Distributed by University of Minnesota Press. In Biogea, the French philosopher Michel Serres attempts to find a softer science, one not as destructive or reductive as the “hard” science some say we practice today. The Enlightenment, the historical root of that hard science, can be thought to have provided the ground for industrialization and a host of […]

Categories: Review • Tags: environmental philosophy, Michel Serres

The Personal, the Political, and the Intellectual

March 15, 2013 by William Eaton

The Personal, the Political, and the Intellectual By William Eaton Review of Finding Oneself in the Other by G.A. Cohen (Princeton University Press, 2013) {click for pdf, complete with easier to follow footnotes} [print_link] [email_link] Finding Oneself is an engaging and demoralizing collection of occasional pieces by the late G.A. (Jerry) Cohen, who was a leading Oxford University political philosopher and the author of several more ambitious works, including Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence; Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (a […]

Categories: Review • Tags: conservatism, Marx, Oxford, Wallace Shawn

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The Destruction of a Presidency

January 21, 2013 by William Eaton

The Destruction of a Presidency By Alan Stein Review of The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by James T. Patterson (Basic Books, 2012) In his new book, James T. Patterson, a Bancroft Award-winning historian, promotes the idea that the Sixties actually began in 1965. This is not a new idea. As the author points out in his introduction, numerous writers have described 1965 as a “hinge” or turning point for America. Patterson states: “After 1965 for better and […]

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Category Archives: Review

Torture: Fact and Fiction

Photographing the Soul

The Chosen Comedians

The Unfeathered Bird

After von Trotta’s Arendt

Eating Intelligent Beings

Environmental Philosophy and the Question of Origins

The Personal, the Political, and the Intellectual

The Destruction of a Presidency