Burning Archive

Revolution is the political dream of modernity. But the candle of modernity has burned out. Despite the modern longing for revolution, in its many forms - to overthrow the elites, to replace the system, to put the people united in charge, to transvalue all values, to remake the world in accordance with our perceived reality - the dream will not last our waking to a new day of history. The Revolution will not be televised. It will not ever happen, again.

In this penultimate reading from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, the narrator, Marlow confronts and establishes an intimate connection with Kurtz, despite his troubled state of mind. “Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear - concentrated, it is true upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear . . . But his soul was mad.” Conrad, Heart of Darkness, p.

Finally, on page 85 of 111, this week we finally stand face to face with Kurtz. “It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menace at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. ” Conrad, Heart of Darkness, p.

Over the last week, I sent you all a 4,600 mid-week essay on Foucault and Marxism, and a 6,200 word Long Read on Orders of Imperial Violence. And I also had a little incident of illness that disrupted the end of my week. So this weekend, I will curtail the length, especially for those enjoying the Northern Summer.

Every month in 2026 as part of the World History Book Club, I am sharing reflections on an historian who made me. This month’s historian is: Michel Foucault. His ‘complicated’1 relationship with history, madness and Marxism set the course of my early intellectual life, including my doctorate. This fence-jumping French philosopher, who died of AIDS in 1984 aged but 57, is an historian who made me.

Upgrade to paid to play voiceover Finally, almost three-quarters of the way through Heart of Darkness, we meet Kurtz. Well, almost. We meet the enigmatic shade of Mr Kurtz through the narrator, Marlow’s memory of his voice. “I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing.

Upgrade to paid to play voiceover Every day on the internet a fashionable madman (they are mostly men) predicts, with a boring pedantic cry, that “World War Three” has begun or will do, any day now. The history of empires and realist game theory proves it. Click, like and subscribe. But World War Three never comes. The small, regional or ‘proxy’ war, the Cold War 2.0, or the ‘frozen conflict’ never quite breaks out into total, global war. Count your blessings while you may.

Dear readers, especially recent subscribers, Usually on Mondays I release my Slow Read, and I am half way through this season’s slow read of Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness - a great modernist novel and a profound if imperfect reflection on colonisation and late nineteenth century globalisation. I am reading Heart of Darkness slowly in conversation with Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.

Russophobia has raised its chimeric heads again. NATO declared war on “the long-term threat Russia poses to Euro-Atlantic security and stability.” The Coming Storm of war looms. As Richard Sakwa told me this week, the Ukraine War threatens to widen into a European-Russian war, then cross the threshold of nuclear war. To save the world from this global catastrophe, we must look into our Western hearts, and history.

Earlier this week I interviewed Professor about his new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Follies of Empire, and concerns that war will become a full scale Europe-Russia or NATO-Russia war. I am releasing an early access highlight of Professor Sakwa’s assessment of how the war is developing and prospect of peace receding. The full interview will be post…