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The World Wide Web might have been invented by a Briton working for a European research organization, but let’s face it: The internet is American. The world’s richest tech firms are almost all American, including Apple, the single most valuable publicly traded company in the world. Much of the planet’s communications are sifted through the intelligence agencies of the United States and its proxies. The …

Philosopher Charles Taylor has had a life in politics as well as academia. During the 1950s, when he was studying philosophy at Oxford, he wrote and edited Universities and Left Review, which later became New Left Review, a political and intellectual journal. When he returned to Canada in the early 1960s, while teaching political science, he ran for Parliament unsuccessfully three times, including against future …

Karen Fiss is a writer, curator, and professor of visual studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Before participating in the Zócalo/MOCA panel “Is Art Our Last Safe Space?” she talked in the Zócalo green room and gave her shortest definition of nation-branding—which she studies—revealed her favorite museum, and shared the books she’s re-read the most.
 
Q: If you had one more …

One night, driving along Blue River Road, I’m startled and disoriented by the shock of headlights coming up over a hill. When you’re night blind like me, the vision blurs, and in that moment before clarity returns, you see only edges of images—here, a road sign; there, a sycamore—and feel suspended, not quite yourself, not quite alone.
 
Rebecca Norris Webb often interweaves her text …

Tulsa Kinney is editor and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based contemporary art magazine Artillery. Before moderating the Zócalo/MOCA panel “Is Art Our Last Safe Space?” she talked in the Zócalo green room about her past job driving a forklift, and why the Los Angeles art world isn’t as unique as it could be.
 
Q: What salad dressing best describes you?
A: Vinegar and oil. It’s the only …

When newly-elected Donald Trump took his family to a restaurant for dinner without telling the public recently, the press flipped out. A chorus of complaints swelled across the land and apoplexy ensued among the news media.
“He didn’t tell us!”
“He’d supposed to let us know!”
“That’s not how it’s done!”
“We should have come along and sat outside while he ate steak!”
Journalists and editorial writers pilloried Mr. Trump …

It’s hard for me to think of a philosopher more important for my work than Charles Taylor. I’m a sociologist, and while most people don’t think of sociology as an especially philosophical discipline, if you dig a little beneath the surface, philosophy is actually all you’ll find. That’s not just true for sociologists either: It’s true for anyone who makes arguments about people, which is …

It was, fittingly, through Hegel that I first met Charles Taylor in Oxford. In 1977, I began a post-graduate thesis on Hegel. In love with Western Marxism at that time, I thought my attraction to Hegel was because he was Marx’s illustrious predecessor. But later I realized that he was appealing also because his philosophy resonated with traditions of Hindu thought that were part of …

It’s harder to be an optimist when times are uncertain than when they are relatively sunny. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, professor emeritus at McGill University, explains the sources of his optimism.
Since the 1960s Taylor has written about the humanities, sociology, political science, and the history of philosophy. Through his writing (16 books plus contributions to many others), teaching, and collaborations, Taylor has plumbed the …

Did the presidential election change the Pacific Rim as we know it?
During these days of transition speculation, there is plenty of talk about what president-elect Donald Trump’s victory means for health care, for immigrants, for the economy, for minorities, for NATO, and so on. In terms of long-term national interests, it’s important to add the endangered concept of a U.S.-centric Pacific Rim to this list. …