“Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.” – Roberto Bolaño, “The Savage Detectives” I have discovered the work of Chilean poet/novelist/essayist, Roberto Bolaño, in the past year. For years […]
“Natural Symbols”: On the Brutality of Popular Opinion and Why You Think You’re Always Right
Anthropologist Mary Douglas published a book called Natural Symbols 45 years ago. It’s a gateway into thinking about how individuals encode their perceptions of reality through the complex cosmology of cultural symbols they live in — bodily or “natural” symbols in particular. The […]
