Phenomenology is the study of the phenomena we experience. Taking a step back from the way we normally perceive the world, the filters and abstractions that make it possible to live in it, phenomenologists try to perceive the information their senses provide as directly as possible. This makes it a very subjective study with findings that are hard to generalize, and that’s part of the point. How boring wouldn’t it be to live based solely on generalizable undisputed facts? ...
Sometimes there are papers that are interesting, have a simple core argument, but are nevertheless hard to approach (perhaps because of added nuance or rigour requirements). “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders” by Arash Abizadeh is one such paper that I will attempt to distill down to it’s core below. For more details, elaborations and the impacts on the self-determination argument I refer you to the full paper. ...
I think there is something special about The Malazan Book of the Fallen’s magic. It’s honestly hard to put it into words, but I think it is something to do with how inseparable the magic is both from the world and from the text itself. The magic doesn’t feel like a system, it isn’t just the physical effects that affect the world. No, the whole world is magical and can’t be neatly separated into a ‘system’ and a ‘place’, nor can the magic be disconnected from the prose itself. ...