Sanders Isaac Bernstein
@Return2Sanders
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reader, writer, theatergoer. PhD. Into memory politics. Work in @jewishcurrents , @thebafflermag , @HypocriteRdr & elsewhere. Stage Editor @theberlinermag .
Berlin, Germany
Joined January 2019
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At this time of so much—too much—death, I wrote about the unheeded politics of Elias Canetti‘s powerful posthumous text, The Book Against Death (translated by Peter Filkins & published by
@NewDirections
in English), for
@thebafflermag
:
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Arundhati Roy speaks out at the Munich Literature Festival:
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Students have been mobilizing across Berlin’s campuses for weeks. They are now beginning to give voice to their narrative—and not simply letting Axel Springer pubs and Germany‘s legacy press (deeply anti-Palestinian) frame as reactionary hate their deliberate actions of concern.
Wichtiges Statement der Studentenbewegung, die den Hörsaal an der FU in
#Berlin
besetzt hat:
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How quickly German government ministers have accused academics of relativizing the Holocaust when their thoughtful research contextualized it within broader histories of colonialism. But when a well-known xenophobe wildly claims Nazis were more moral than Hamas: flowers. Schande.
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A single letter signed 16 years ago has been accepted by a German court as evidence that Adania Shibli is an “engaged BDS activist”—a dangerously low bar for a designation that denies access to state support & even state-supported venues:
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Masha Gessen in the Hannah Arendt Preis discussion:
@hrw
@mashagessen
"The biggest difference between Gazans and the Jewish ghettos of occupied Europe is that many Gazans are still alive and the world has an opportunity to do something about it"
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Proud of this piece for
@CodaStory
. Some things have changed since I began writing this—protests are now happening. But the underlying problem—the extraordinary narrowness of of the lesson Germany has learned from its past—remains:
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Here is Die Zeit on this:
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And Berlin’s senate has just proposed all who receive arts funding must agree to IHRA-defined idea of anti-anti-Semitism (a contested definition that conflates valid critiques of Zionism & Israel with antisemitism):
a year ago, it was a completely fringe topic but now
@TheEconomist
is writing about Germany's mass cancellation of critics of Israel many of whom are Jewish
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Heinrich Böll Stiftung wrote that this comparison "implies that Israel has the aim to liquidate Gaza like a Nazi ghetto. This statement is not a proposition for public discussion. It does not help to understand the conflict in the Middle East..
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..comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated."
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A reflection on speaking truth to power from
@Deborah_Feldman
, who tried to tell Robert Habeck: "the only legitimate lesson to be learned from the horrors of the Holocaust was the unconditional defence of human rights for all." What a powerful essay.
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Here is the link which you might have to copy and paste—don’t know why it’s not working through Twitter:
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…This statement is for us not acceptable and we reject it.“
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Full quote objected to: "But as in the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe, there are no prison guards - Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term “ghetto” would have drawn fire for…
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This is a catastrophe for Germany‘a cultural world.
“In the current circumstances we do not believe that there is a space in Germany for an open exchange of ideas and the development of complex and nuanced artistic approaches that artists and curators deserve.”
— D16's now fully resigned finding committee
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So proud to play a part in this open letter about the crackdown on civic life in Germany from 100+ Jewish writers & artists in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors. Now in English
@nplusonemag
:
Ein offener Brief “gegen die demokratische Öffentlichkeit nach den schrecklichen Gewalttaten in Israel und Palästina” und für “volle Solidarität mit unseren arabischen, muslimischen und insbesondere palästinensischen Nachbarn.” Hört das Grundgesetz an!
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I was at Oyoun‘s press conference this morning—a tearful affair, where (much of) the German press continued to press the culture center.
@hahauenstein
offers a vital engagement with the dynamics threatening to shut Oyoun’s doors & generally immiserate Germany’s cultural world.
My latest on how Germany's culture scene and state funding model are crumbling as freedom of speech on Israel/Palestine is becoming increasingly restricted in the wake of the war.
@artnet
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Saturday at 1 PM!
@davidthejong
&
@ZacharyGallant
to speak in honor of Zachary & Katharina Gallant’s new book, Nazis All the Way Down. They’ve followed the money. They have the receipts. A conversation about the national reckoning of Nazi profit, debt & guilt still needed today.
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Ein offener Brief “gegen die demokratische Öffentlichkeit nach den schrecklichen Gewalttaten in Israel und Palästina” und für “volle Solidarität mit unseren arabischen, muslimischen und insbesondere palästinensischen Nachbarn.” Hört das Grundgesetz an!
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Excellent letter on the state of things in Germany from
@thedialmag
and
@benmauk
: a sober look at official discourse as well as the situation in the streets. Also its final paragraph demands a longer piece on the condition for both Muslims and Jews in Germany today…
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Berlin's cultural scene: not dead yet! Thanks to all who organized to push back against the dangerous political instrumentalization of anti-antisemitism. (TBC: Berlin's pluralist society should have no place for racism or antisemitism; this clause did not help achieve that goal.)
Breaking: Berlin drops the IHRA clause - which limits criticism of Israel -from cultural funding applications after sustained protest from artists
"I have to take seriously the legal and critical voices that saw the clause as a restriction on artistic freedom" Senator
@ChialoJoe
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Great roundup of the 2021 English language books out of Berlin from
@exberlinermag
and
@ajbwells
. Even in few words, it covers lots of ground! Whole page‘s top 10 picks of the year are fun too. Here for the page’s warm vibe!
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“Kafka said that there was infinite hope, just not for us…the same goes for Krasznahorkai. Against the failure of imagination that characterises our age, he offers imaginary failures. You can’t have hope, but you can’t give up on it either.”
@ajbwells
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Revenge makes for great stories (some of my faves), but does it make for good politics?
@HypocriteRdr
let me think about revenge as I’ve encountered it in & from Berlin. Thank you
@carpe_riot
@kitschified
@pmcwheeler
for your edits on this personal essay:
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Thanks to
@slowberlin
, I got to visit the Berlin homes of Walter Benjamin, the failed academic, flaneuring philosopher, mystical Marxist, and literary critic: . A lovely way for me to end this year of writing in the world. Hope you enjoy it too!
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In honor of my brother finishing Solenoid, which he‘s been lugging around since Christmas (Verdict: "pretty good—a bit like entering a dream or reading a foreign language), here‘s my essay, which he’ll finally deign to read, about the ends of Cărtărescu:
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Come join
@_ryanruby_
, Donna Stonecipher, & Alexander Booth on March 9 to celebrate the life-work of Friederike Mayröcker. Send your prose poems to josephrothtoday
@gmail
.com by February 18.
Details:
And, of course, another too-short snippet of Mayröcker:
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My first article for
@exberlinermag
, on the unsolved thefts of paintings of Lucian Freud and Carl Spitzweg, is now online. Thanks to the art detective
@brand_arthur
, the art professor Dominic Johnson, and the art lawyer Bonnie Czegledi for talking with me!
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Late to this (perhaps appropriately), but
@P_F_Matthews
in the
@european_review
on how Adalbert Stifter grounds a counter tradition to the internet writing proliferating around us—a tradition of attention carried on by Sebald, Cusk, & Cole —is, in the truest sense, wonderful
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A minor mail miracle! The beautiful
@TheLondonMag
December/January issue has finally made its way beyond the border guards! As always, a gorgeous issue. Honored to see my review of
@gabi1981
translation of Max Blecher‘s final work, The Illuminated Burrow, in such good company.
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all I want to do is finish my dissertation but all I don’t want to do is write my dissertation
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How is this part of the "right to defend itself"?
NEW: Satellite imagery reviewed by HRW shows that orchards, greenhouses and farmland in northern Gaza have been razed since the beginning of Israel’s ground invasion, compounding concerns of dire food insecurity and loss of livelihood. 1/14 🧵⤵️
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Why is this human(e) solidarity consistently missing from the German public sphere? Herr Dr Habermas?
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For more about the effectiveness of the antisemitism monitors in Germany, read this (
@plk
):
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Berlin’s summer smells different this year. The poets ask the botanists if they know the reason. What is flowering differently? Are the corpses or urine of the aphids an answer to the mystery?
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Here
@mashagessen
explains the Hannah Arendt Prize brouhaha, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung‘s shifting stance, and how conceiving of the atrocities in Gaza through the lens of the Shoah was the point of the New Yorker article, an applied lesson from the past:
We speak to
@mashagessen
after their reception of the prestigious Hannah Arendt Prize in Germany was postponed when award sponsors withdrew support over the acclaimed
@NewYorker
writer’s comparison of besieged Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.
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March 9, 8:30, Mayröcker Abend
@Lettretage
:
@_ryanruby_
, Alexander Booth, & Donna Stonecipher to discuss Mayröcker‘s living legacy w/
@ajbwells
. Then readings from
@juliabosson
, Don Clermont,
@eyesofdelphi
,
@vijaykhurana
,
@tessaverse
, &
@CristaSiglin
.
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What an incisive essay by
@rob_madole
about the
@LibraryAmerica
reissue of The Naked and the Dead—and what Mailer‘s letters betray about his ambitions and art. Merciless!
“Mailer’s sporadic prescience is one of the trickier parts of his oeuvre, and something that lends ‘The Naked and the Dead’ a large share of its irrefutable staying power.”
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A semi-indulgent, semi-diaristic thread on the writing I've done this year, 2023, my first full year outside of academia since 2012. If you're interested, I elaborate on a few highlights from my year in writing below:
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Important conversation occurring on this podcast about the conflation occurring in Germany where pro-Palestinian activism = antisemitism. (And, sadly, it bears repeating: pro-Palestinian ≠ antisemitic.)
On the new episode of our podcast, On the Nose, contributing editor
@joshualeifer
talks to journalist
@hebh_jamal
and lawyer Nadija Samour about Germany’s intensifying crackdown on Palestinian identity and activism.
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For the most recent
@exberlinermag
, I wrote about Berlin theater after October 7–and what’s missing in the theatrical response: namely, recognition of the humanity we all share, whether Jew, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, German, Israeli, or Palestinian:
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everybody wanting to talk about campus politics is, like, the oddest form of nostalgia
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Baldwin writes something very similar around the same time. Is this simply a reflection of how important (abstract expressionist) painting was to the conception of gold war artmaking—or do writers still feel the same way today?
“I learn as much from painters about how to write as from writers.” —Ernest Hemingway
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I deleted this post because I didn’t want this to continue to circulate—as it said the prize, not prize ceremony, was cancelled.
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For
@JewishCurrents
I wrote about Max Czollek’s De-Integrate!: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century (translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi)—both its sharp critique of Germany‘s Theater of Memory and its strange turn to Quentin Tarantino for inspiration:
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Back in September, I wrote for
@exberlinermag
about how the theaters of Berlin seemed to be rehearsing apocalypses as they contemplated the future…it’s now online:
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@StrickSimon
was kind enough to sit down with me last week to talk about digital fascism, "militant normalcy," gamers, and the trolling leading up to Saturday’s elections:
@europenowjrnl
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2023 roundup from the editors of
@exberlinermag
—with whom it is a delight to work—including
@ajbwells
's praise for the beautiful multilingual reading of Adania Shibli's Minor Notes at Hopscotch. Only wish I could have noted "Bovary"—alas, not enough chaos:
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Come imagine & write about cities with me! December 11 at Lettretage! This is my first workshop with
@thereaderberlin
and, despite the serious-seeming photo, I’m very excited about it!
🗣️ Dear writers: curious about how to make our texts sing 🎼 and breathe like the places we live in? About how to bring the CITIES in our writing to life?
🌇 Imagining the City with Sanders Bernstein 🌃
BOOK YOUR SPOT HERE 👉
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A novelist's eye on the architecture game. At the highest level.
@rob_madole
shows again why you want to travel with him through the loftiest heights of high culture—from Markapoulos's The Temenos in Greece, to, now, for
@thepointmag
, the Venice Biennale:
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just coming up from my chapter on gatsby to say, whatever you do, just don’t go swimming in the pool at the gatsby house k thnx bye
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Even in a train station in a small town in the south of Germany, he found me. No escape!
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Still running on the energy from the workshop yesterday
@thereaderberlin
. What a great group & great discussions about writing cities. Thank you to everyone who was there! And thank you to
@BluBalooo
for making it happen!
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RIP Cormac McCarthy, whose prose possessed a Shakespearean grandeur unrivaled in the US since Faulkner: "What do you think death is, man? Of whom do we speak when we speak of a man who was and is not? Are these blind riddles or are they not some part of every man's jurisdiction?"
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impressed by all of you looking for the words that will determine 2023. I’m still staring at the silty dregs of my tea, trying to divine the shape of 2022. maybe I should have drunk a coffee
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Tonight! A theatrical livestream of the plot against Germany! An incredible
@correctiv_org
investigation of a chilling meeting in Potsdam where the rich, the Right, and the AfD discussed how to deport millions.
Livestream: wir zeigen die szenische Lesung basierend auf den
#CORRECTIV
-Recherchen "Geheimplan gegen Deutschland" heute zusammen mit dem
@Volkstheater_W
und
@nachtkritik
sowie über 30 weiteren Theatern ab 21.15h kostenlos im Livestream unter .
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I'm very excited to begin teaching a course
@thereaderberlin
a month from today about essays! We'll explore a different genre of essay each week while also having lots of time for workshopping.
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A week today! Very excited to be reading with—and listening to the work from—this group that (except for the wonderful
@juliabosson
and
@acocotas
) has sagely chosen to keep away from Twitter. I’ll be rambling about Günzburg and Ginsbergs.
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@ukla_ukla
@___adn
ja du hast Recht! Das ist Quelle des Problems (und Unterdrückung)! Aber diese Kombination ist richtig unheilig—eine schreckliche Entwicklung.
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A weird day of painfully slow work wrapped up only a bit ago, plans for the evening overrun (no Sigrid Weigel for me). However, I feel lucky I finally had time to truly sit with Ryan Ruby's "Resisting Oblivion." () I'm pitifully late to this vital essay.
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Just to clarify: Gessen will still receive this prize—the ceremony not the prize itself has been cancelled (both Heinrich Böll Stiftung and the Bremen Senate pulled out after denouncing Gessen‘s comparison):
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Don’t loaf around in the sun, go watch Il Teorema di Pasolini and suffer abandonment by god! (Or maybe, loaf in the warmth and then enjoy the tap dancing at the Schaubühne?) in any case, my theater reviews & picks for
@exberlinermag
:
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From the manic front lines of the German-speaking world of theater (as well as the world of some amazing Polish and Ukranian-language productions)—a report on Theatertreffen 2023:
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Theaters have been packed again this past season—and the vibe’s been great. Wrote about Berlin’s audiences & how they make it so fun to go the theater here. Thank you, Berlin theatergoers! First column for
@exberlinermag
is dedicated to you:
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During this moment where discourse has turned repressive, why it is that so many of those enforcing censure on advocating for the basic rights of Palestinians are self-styled "dissidents"? Brilliant work by
@ajbwells
exploding illusion in
@thedrift_mag
.
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Recommend for all who want to understand the situation in Germany (as well as the strange phenomenon of the anti-Deutsch).
I had the pleasure of going on
@dandenvir
's podcast to blab about Germany and as people who know me irl can attest, this is the slowest I've ever spoken (recommend hearing it at 1.5x speed)
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And who would determine the antisemitism?
The Minister-President of Bavaria, Markus Söder, champions stripping German nationality for antisemitism.
It’s unclear whether that would include his deputy, who in August was revealed to have spread antisemitic pamphlets in his youth. He was defended by Söder and kept his job.
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I wrote a little about the Querdenker protests, but mostly about Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone with the Wind, and Nazi Germany for The Conversation:
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“How does it feel, as a Dresdener, to see your hometown transformed at least once every year into a political battleground of international interest, a place where various factions squabble over the legacy of a long-past local wound?”
@ajbwells
in Dresden
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"The IHRA definition of antisemitism needs to be dropped and the Jerusalem definition...needs to be adopted....it is really bad for the jews for non-antisemitism to be lumped in with antisemitism."
@mashagessen
says this to applause
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This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.
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@slowberlin
let me wander around Berlin‘s Scheunenviertel and try to remember some of the stories of that place‘s former Jewish community.
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@underagreysky
@LisaLettretage
@juliabosson
@ajbwells
Thank you, Paul, Alex, and Julia! Also thanks to
@TomWRollins
,
@JenEmetcalf
,
@katemcnaughton
, and Daniel Antoszyk for such wonderful Feuilletons. I’m excited to see them up on
@seeyouelsewhere
!
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I just can’t with the response to Berlinale…
Germany's justice minister declares calls for a ceasefire and against occupation and apartheid antisemitic and threatens artists, among them Palestinian and Jewish Israeli, with criminal prosecution. No joke. Just Germany in 2024.
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Overheard outside a Berlin theater:
"But is it always with puppets?"
"No, but it’s always really strange."
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Established scholars on a panel giving advice for grad students were asked if there existed an important text that they had not read. Not one of them would admit to not having read everything. Instead they recommended a book about pretending to have read books that one hadn‘t.
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it‘s true, i am a degenerate, decadent, rootless cosmopopolitan:
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Loved learning from and about the experimental film community in Berlin for this piece. A whole different mode of seeing the world!
🎞️ Sure, you can go to the
#Berlinale
- but if you *really* loved movies, you'd be taping together old film negatives in a studio in Wilmersdorf...
🇬🇷 Really nice piece here from
@Return2Sanders
, on the obsessive Berliners at work to restore
#Eniaois
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don’t be anxious, it’s just the cavern of nullity, the end of your words, ideas, feelings, dreams, concepts, constellations, theories, scenes—until you make your way out of it with something
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"Palästinenser sind mit der deutschen Geschichte besonders eng verbunden" / "Palestinians are particularly closely connected to German history" [because of how the Nakba follows the Shoah]; a much-needed intervention about opening & pluralizing Germany‘s memory culture
Während bei vielen Alt-Deutschen das Bewusstsein für die NS-Geschichte rasant verfällt, sollen sich Eingewanderte zu Täternachfahren umfigurieren. Meine Gedanken über Alternativen: Memory Citizenship und Geschichtsbewusstsein in Diversität.
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Everyone's talking about the UK hoarding the vaccines, but what about the cadbury creme eggs?
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Second issue of a Berlin lit mag! Interested in writing about the city! Submissions open!
@thereaderberlin
📚 Exciting news! 🌆 Submissions are now open for issue two of The Berlin Literary Review! We're hoping to explore the concrete jungles with our theme:
"Tales from the City"
We're searching for Short Fiction, Poetry, and Non-Fiction Travel Writing.
#WritingCommunity
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Benjamin avoided conscription during WW I by failing two physicals. First time, he pretended he suffered from a palsy —and then for the second time he stayed up all night and drank lots of black coffee (which apparently was a classic technique to fail physicals?)
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Gessen is making a clear, heavily-documented, and consistent case for the comparison they made—and for why it is imperative to take action now.
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It’s work like this that‘s helping cultivate "a growing public understanding of the politics and priorities underpinning the 2028 games and the actual costs to host cities."
@m_gustavussen
lays out the Olympics situation in LA and the work of grassroots groups against that graft!
I have a new piece out for
@jacobin
on Olympic gentrification in Los Angeles and how groups like
@stopthegondola
@NOlympicsLA
@InglewoodTenant
and
@SAJE_ShiftPower
are mobilizing against it
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argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina, campéon del mundo, argentina,
The son of a Romanian mother and grandson, on his father’s side, of Polish Jews who fled the Nazis, Cantor hails from Buenos Aires and grew up in SoCal. This is the “¡Gooooooooool!” he was born to announce!
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Excited to talk with
@underagreysky
@juliabosson
@ajbwells
about Joseph Roth on Saturday
@LisaLettretage
and to hear excerpts from Paul and Julia's Rothian projects—as well as feuilletons from
@TomWRollins
,
@katemcnaughton
, Jen Metcalf & Daniel Antoszyk!
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Unsurprising but sad to learn about the resignation of Ranjit Hoskote from Documenta 16. His opposition to the extreme nationalism of a "Zionism and Hindutva" event has been conflated with antisemitism. Here is his letter:
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How do fascist cultures take form and travel—across media, across borders, across languages? Come discuss it with me at MLA 2022 in Washington D.C.?
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Why these strange equivalences,
@hoyer_kat
: far-right intimidation, far-left attacks, "imported antisemitism"? 84% of antisemitic hate crimes are from the far right! Antisemitism cannot be discussed in isolation—but in relation! Only in a just, plural society can we all be safe
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Rare appearance of Palestinian voices in a German newspaper—an important article from
@wiebkehollersen
:
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It is precisely this conception of the AfD as "against current politics" that highlights how far right the party truly is. This was the call of Mussolini’s & Hitler’s fascism too…perhaps scarier stuff in this article than it’s author fully recognizes…
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Getting ready for the return to New Jersey by eating a bagel and thinking about visiting Asbury Park Coffee on my errands today. Maybe I even began the the reentry process by watching West Side Story earlier this week?
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What great news!
Bookforum is back!
We’re thrilled to announce the magazine’s return, in partnership with
@TheNation
magazine. But we need your support to stick around for the long haul.
Subscriptions start at $30 if you follow this link:
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living my life hoping to make a deliberate error that gets me invited to write a novel.
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It is exactly as Hasan says: so strange that this outbreak of classic "Protocol of the Elders of Zion" antisemitism is not a bigger story. Only including this image because I did not feel like retweeting the video while eating breakfast.
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