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    Viewing Libya through a different lens

    An inevitably recurring theme in discussions of foreignness is the disjunction between our increasingly globalized world and global systems that limit and misrepresent that globalization. We have found this tension in economics this month: the European Union’s ongoing economic struggles and this month’s financial roller coaster, triggered by the U.S. debt crisis, are both symptoms of global society haltingly coming to terms with an interconnectedness unprecedented in history. And, perhaps equally poignantly, we have found it in politics: global reactions to turmoil in Libya signal uneasiness and uncertainty in our collective understanding of the extent to which global society should intervene in the affairs of a sovereign state. When revolution…

  • Can we be foreign to our own selves?

    It is a question with which we are forced to grapple these days. As shocking natural disasters rock the world, we look to each other, but we also look to ourselves, suddenly finding in our own lives transience and fragility.  We consider anew what matters and what does not matter. We ponder and we question and we ponder some more, hoping for answers but wondering where they are within our own selves. And we wonder how well we even know ourselves. Of course, the question of who we are as individuals is hardly a recent one in our collective consciousness. Self-discovery is and always has been a recurring theme in…