I Bob Carty’s Arctic report and how it froze my heart Scientists do not write in the first person, since their findings seek to reflect processes that unfold beyond the vagaries of human will. When they say that […]
Contributors
Patrick Barnard
"The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves."
It is an extraordinary fact that for more than three decades, France never officially acknowledged the Algerian War.
What we are seeing is a return of chaos whenever there is a unilateral decision to close borders
Yves Engler’s latest book, Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, continues this author’s relentless work not only of speaking truth to power, but also of telling Canadians the truth about themselves. Near the end of his […]
There is a remarkable scene in Laura Poitras’ film Citizenfour, her prize-winning documentary on whistle-blower Edward Snowden. In the film, Poitras, the investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the defense and intelligence correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill, […]
[Montreal April 6, 2015] Greece – Ελλάς or Hellas – is a place that for many people has existed only as a sunny spot visited from some monstrous cruise ship, or perhaps a mental image of a make-believe […]
For several thousand years, the dominant view of the arts and literature has been that they imitate reality. Even in the 21st century, well after the normative idea of mimesis has been challenged, toppled, and made fun of – […]
I — Mimesis Beyond all the special effects in the world of 2014, behind the digitalized technologies, the espionage, the surveillance, the intrusive computer viruses, the attempts to create self-conscious machines and even to cook up new universes – […]
I – Long Ago In the beginning there was Migration…not Eden, not Providence, not the Prime Mover. If we dig deep and look far, we see that migrations have made us what we are. And the first of […]
[Editorial note: Part one was published in December 2013.] III. Shakespeare, Nothingness, and the Audience An actress who worked professionally in the 1920s said to me of Shakespeare: “To appreciate him, I think, you have to realize that Shakespeare was […]
[Editors’ note: We are publishing Patrick Barnard’s essay “The Ladder is Gone” in two parts: the first installment in this issue of Montreal Serai and the second in the next issue this coming Spring. In this first part of the […]
I. Inequality and Breakdown In the spring of 2013 we are still living in an economic crisis of global proportions, marked by inequality and massive injuries of class. That the Dow-Jones index has broken through the 14,000 mark, or […]
I Canada – Deformed at home, diminished abroad Activist, journalist, and researcher Yves Engler has just produced an important handbook of our national recessional – The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy (RED Publishing, Fernwood Publishing, 2012). In this small […]
Dreaming By Movies In 2012, a great number of people of the world’s population live and stay in one place, with very little material wealth, and without any luxury. But in absolute terms, there are also many individuals today who […]
As various contributors point out in this issue of Montreal Serai, we are obviously now living in an era of immense technical change, most of it centered on digitalization, computers, and nano-technology. At the same time, a large […]
Dawson – The New “Other” as The New “Us”? Most writers and journalists who have grown up with the contemporary world and have puzzled about it are also people who think about the perennial divisions of “Us” and “Them.” That […]
I – Wings in The Dust Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville Change plus vite, helas! que le coeur d’un mortel… –“Le Cygne,” Charles Baudelaire, 1857 The old Paris is gone (the form of […]
THE ISSUE: This summer Montreal Serai focuses on the environment through a variety of viewpoints. Jacqueline Fortson, who has moved to Canada from Mexico, gives us a contemporary photo-essay “Montreal – Nature and the City: What makes Montreal a […]
I – Every Piece of Green on Earth “Everything come up out of ground –language, people, emu, kangaroo, grass. That’s Law.” –Hobbles Danaiyarri, from Yarralin, Northern Territory, Australia* In September 2008, I was attending a conference on urban […]
Fennario’s War (41 minutes) is a simple film. The Montreal playwright, David Fennario, reads a text in his Verdun apartment about World War One. He has based his drama on an interview he did with a Great War vet in […]
I – A Public Place Like A Painting We are all acutely aware that our world is both a big and a small place. There were about 1 billion of us in 1900, but now we are 6 billion. And […]
