Category Archives: Idea

Tahiti – Time to eat time!

By admin | Published: 9 July 2008

Around 1,000 years after Tahiti was first settled by Polynesians, the English sailor Samuel Wallis arrived to claim the territory as ‘King George the Third’s Island‘. The Tahitians attempted to repulse the intruders, but the superior weaponry of the English made an unequal match. When the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville arrived the following [...]

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Italy – Who wants to be South?

By admin | Published: 27 May 2008

Sicily has long been a place for imagining the wider world. In 3rd century BC, Archimedes developed the magic of levers to the point where he could speculate, ‘Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.’ In 12th century Palermo, the court of King Roger II brought together the finest [...]

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Mauritius: Mistakes galore

By admin | Published: 22 May 2008

The Mauritian writer Lindsay Collen has responded to the story of Mauritius as ‘an island of mistakes’ with a critical analysis of colonial myths. In particular, she critiques the way Mauritius is reduced, in terms of space and language. It’s a long piece, but worth presenting in full for the issues it raises more generally [...]

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From America’s Deep South…

By admin | Published: 11 May 2008

It’s a quintessential example of south-phobia. Putting aside the issue of death penalty and international law, the magazine cover of this establishment university reinforces the image of the South as a realm beyond the law. You can include with this not only films of the South like Deliverance, but also other nightmares of southern violence [...]

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Colombia – from El Dorado to FARC

By admin | Published: 24 March 2008

The idea continues its southward journey. We move from an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean to a tropical land which, though part of the Northern Hemisphere, crowns the continent of South America. Not just geographically in the northern half, Colombia is also widely seen as ally to its northern patron, the USA, [...]

Also posted in Colombia, journey, Zero | 1 Comment