In a post several years ago ( http://www.leithart.com/archives/002185.php ) I summarized Foucault’s thoughts on the “architecture of control.
It didn’t occur to me at the time that there are intriguing similarities between the process that Foucault describes and the organization of sacred space in antique religious. Perhaps it’s no more than a distant analogy, but perhaps it’s further evidence of Hamann’s thesis that modern civilization is “Pharisaical.”
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…