PinnedOf smells and lines: Subaltern Dystopia in Bong Joon Ho’s ParasiteParasite, the Korean movie that overcame linguistic limitations of the Academy and transcended borders with an evocative and relatable tale of class-conflict stands as the paradigm shift in the global culture of cinema. Besides the various institutional validations that the movie received, it is worth asking why the movie was…Parasite 20197 min read
Feb 23Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion and the historical kaleidoscope of coastal East Africa“…there was someone always looking on and adding fragment to someone else’s fragment, until sooner or later everything was found out…”[1] What are stories to history? When do people narrate stories, for what purpose? Whose narration counts as a story and whose is a history? Which is a qasida and…Abdulrazak Gurnah15 min read
Nov 8, 2021Very Short Proposition on how to ‘value’ Humanities in relation to its Public[ I wrote this for a class, so it’s short and crisp. References some existing theories and ideas, sometimes not so explicitly.] To pose the question of what the value of humanities is to the public, it is imperative to first examine the relationship between notion of the ‘human’ and…Public Humanities4 min read
Feb 27, 2021Entitlement and Unacknowledged Racism & Xenophobia in Matthias Matuschik’s 2nd apology to BTSMy letter to Matthias Matuschik There are so many problems with this apology that one needs to flesh out to see that even this apology, in fact, is racist. (Screenshot from https://www.soompi.com/article/1456646wpp/german-radio-station-and-dj-issue-2nd-apology-for-racist-remarks-about-bts-max-halsey-and-lauv-speak-out-to-show-support-for-the-band ) Firstly, why should you have the right to end a statement at — I was annoyed that the boyband BTS covered a…Bts5 min read
Jan 1, 2021To Namjoon : Reply 2021From the end of the earth, I write to you now when my new year just began. Your letter ended my last year, so I begin my new one dedicating a few words to your thoughts. This is a letter about time, and the word ‘love’. Time, is a funny…Kim Namjoon4 min read
Jan 1, 2021The Eternal Residue of 2020 : Wrapping upWith the new year looming right round the corner (it is 10:45 pm here, PST California), we replenish our dreary and dragged souls with a new ray of hope and lights that this construct of time offers in the form of a New Year. We think of it as a…New Year5 min read
Dec 26, 2020Starting with K-Dramas? Here’s your GuideA Few Disclaimers first: To begin with, it is hard to categorize k-dramas. Because they’re usually so well written, that they’re never about any one thing, and bring together multiple threads. …Kdrama3 min read
Oct 17, 2020Singing Singularity: BTS and their liminality on music’s mapsAbstract: BTS rebrands itself as liminal to the boundaries of ‘pop’ music. This presentation will examine the politics of this liminality. I examine how BTS transcends, transgresses and reinvents these categories in their unique negotiation of borders in music. These negotiations animate the tension that Arjun Appadurai pointed out between…Bts17 min read
Oct 17, 2020Decolonial Futurity: the eternally relevant questions from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.Frantz Fanon’s canonical text The Wretched of the Earth has inspired generations of postcolonial scholars to read the inimical potential of colonial violence as the foundation of the struggles of liberation in postcolonial Africa. There are some fundamental questions it raised in 1961, whose relevance reflect in the realities of…Decolonization6 min read
