Pankaj Mishra, whom I’ve previously praised, has an excellent, excellent article up at theguardian, as it calls itself these days, “How to think about Islamic State”, though it might better be called “Civilization and its Discontents, Neo-Liberal Edition,” because it treats the really world-wide complaints of those who aren’t making a decent living in the…
Tag: pankaj mishra
Meet the new liberators, same as the old liberators
In the past, I’ve raved, or at least praised, Pankaj Mishra and his book, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia. In his book, Mishra quotes a testy Egyptian on the original liberators of the benighted East, the army of Napoleon Bonaparte: “It is their custom not to bury their dead but…
Meaney, Fukuyama, and Mishra, Round 2
Yesterday, I talked up the Nation’s Tom Meaney and his subjects/victims Pankaj Mishra and Francis Fukuyama and today I’d like to return to the fray. In his review of Fukuyama’s most recent book, The Origins of Order, Meaney, recapitulates, in a not too friendly manner, Fukuyama’s intellectual progress from his famous/infamous “The End of History?”…
Thomas Meaney: Five thousand feet above the five thousand foot folks
A grad student who knows everything? That seems to be the case with Thomas Meaney over at the Nation, who pours both illumination and condescension on mega-thinkers like Francis Fukuyama and Pankaj Mishra. I first caught up with Tom in his four-barreled review of After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge From the Global South 1957–1986 (Giuliano Garavini), The Poorer Nations:…