Tackling the history of nations and colonies from the perspective of the "liminal spaces" between dominators and dominated, Homi Bhabha insists that all cultural identity is essentially and originally hybrid. By "liminal space," Bhabha means the site of conflict, interaction, and mutual assimilation

Deconstructive, Egalitarian, Political, Post-colonialism, Power, Repetition

Descartes isolated himself in a cabin, set a ball of wax in front of himself, and set about determining what he could know. Martin Heidegger, some 300 years later, saw this thought experiment as all wrong: Descartes should have picked up the wax, used it, molded it. For Heidegger, the truth is reveal

Contemplative, Deconstruction, Ecstatic, Illusive, Phenomenology, Repetition, Spectral, Spiritual

The term hermeneutics comes from the name of the Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes. Over the past millenia, hermeneutics has referred to the practice of theological interpretation. But for Gadamer, who re-introduced the term hermeneutics into contemporary discussion, the hermeneutic process is not

Contemplative, Dense, Event, Hermeneutics, Repetition, Sincere

Herman Melville was born in 1819 to a quintessentially American family -- one bestarred with Revolutionary heroes and Tea Party guests. His father, Allan Melvill (who would later add the elegant "e" to the family name), had a mediocre opinion of him, writing around his son's 12th birthday that he was

Baroque, Expansive, Grand, Lyrical, Overflowing, Repetition, Romantic literature, Sublime