What a great (and timely) post. I'm signing up for writing about place workshop because thankfully it's not during the Martinborough festival or Waitanagi day - but also because this business of cosmopolitanism (is that the word?) really interests me at the moment. Early last year I read a great detective novel where The Hole in Manhattan was as much a character as a place - where the Mob hid the bodies -and still might. I am on the list to receive updates by emai about progess ( there has been a lot of talk) and can attend Zoom meetings, I 'visited' via Google Earth - it certainly is surreal real-estate and place out of time - in every sense - worth a google if you have time.
Enjoy your break, the South Island and hopefully the van.
Hi Susan! I'm delighted to have you with us! Place is so very cool when done right--a sort of elemental mystery of prose & geography working together. I'm really excited for that one! As for places plural--I'm all for cosmopolitanism having a moment again. All the scholarly stuff I read about it for the PhD is from ther 90s and as I highlight I desperately want to go back and say GUYS...BAD NEWS.... Will check out The Hole, sounds very creepy indeed! A wonderful break to you too, and see you in workshop!
Tēnā koe, brother. My work year ends in about 30 minutes when our office opens some wine, bubbles, beer, juice and plain old agua and breaks out some comfort snacks. Will not work again until 12 Jan and am fully committed to full-scale relaxation, this being the first summer in 3 years we did not alight to the snowy Pacific Northwest. The Kiwi Summer is a thing of beauty and we are gonna embrace it anew.
I am not much for resolutions, but I have been threatening to write for oh, 20 years. Have a few drafts going on Substack and will polish them as I consider new topics and start sharing in 2026. Not for money - but for saying what I need to say. I think that's enough.
Wishing you and the Keane Klan a restful, relaxing, fun holiday break. See you on the other side.
WORK DO!!! Have a deliciously taboo/awkward office beer or three for me, bro. Enjoy the break, and the proper summer! If it wasn't for this season I think I would have bailed on these islands years ago--can't imagine living without it now. Start writing! Come to a workshop (there's one about starting!) Or just...start writing at home! The secret to this Substack thing is to just start hitting send. I learn (and forget) every time. Say what needs saying. Amen. See you in '26, will holler when I get over the hill!
I am at a loss when I face the rise in the last 10 years or so of woke ethnonationalism and race essentialism, because it means that the great human desire and capability to remake oneself, to break off from the tribe and either join a new one or start one's own (look up schizmogenesis!), is now often seen only through the lens of privilege and appropriation. That there can be tolerated neither a liberal cosmopolitan subject nor one born through cross-national/racial/ethnic worker solidarity is a Nazi's wet dream -- and yet here we are, a globe increasingly made of xenophobes weakly opposed by an elite of trauma-informed segregationists, each wishing for a realm of purity and clear boundaries. When, in fact, humans are messy bitches all. We love mixing, we love stealing each other's best ideas, we love complaining about the people whose foods we can't stop eating. It's everything good we like about society. And yet it seems like we are determined to make it impossible to continue. So thank you Dan, quite sincerely, for standing up for cultural chameleons and adaptive weirdos. Have a great break!
Amen brother. Messy bitches all, indeed! The pendulum has swung way too far. Truth is that when I started at NYU Shanghai (2014) we were still in the late vapor trail of globalization, and when I taught cosmopolitanism I was usually critiquing the university's unquestioning embrace of the 'global.' At worst, it's a bunch of a rich Westerners patting themselves on the back for being born rich enough to travel, and tends to see anyone who doesn't travel as unequal, unenlightened, etc. Then Brexit & Trump happened, and China started locking up all the Uyghurs, and the world flipped. I realized (again) just how weird and counter-culture cosmopolitanism is, when done right & open to all! I guess my longer response to Sam's piece is that cosmopolitanism seems to feel truest and strongest *in opposition* to oppressive nationalism & identity rules, while once the doors are open things get gradually more and more puffy, tourism-based, a consumption of difference rather than a true embrace. I wish we'd settle somewhere in the middle. I don't know that we ever will. Purity sucks! Hybridity pa' siempre! Thanks so much for reading and your kind support this year. A grand holidy to you, sir!
Thanks for your posts Dan, I really look forward to seeing them pop up, you have a unique perspective on things that I enjoy reading from here in Oz across the ditch. I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, and have tried to see as much of it as possible over the last 30 years, and intend to continue to do so for as long as I can. Happy Christmas and New Year, enjoy your break.
Ata Mārie Dan
What a great (and timely) post. I'm signing up for writing about place workshop because thankfully it's not during the Martinborough festival or Waitanagi day - but also because this business of cosmopolitanism (is that the word?) really interests me at the moment. Early last year I read a great detective novel where The Hole in Manhattan was as much a character as a place - where the Mob hid the bodies -and still might. I am on the list to receive updates by emai about progess ( there has been a lot of talk) and can attend Zoom meetings, I 'visited' via Google Earth - it certainly is surreal real-estate and place out of time - in every sense - worth a google if you have time.
Enjoy your break, the South Island and hopefully the van.
Hi Susan! I'm delighted to have you with us! Place is so very cool when done right--a sort of elemental mystery of prose & geography working together. I'm really excited for that one! As for places plural--I'm all for cosmopolitanism having a moment again. All the scholarly stuff I read about it for the PhD is from ther 90s and as I highlight I desperately want to go back and say GUYS...BAD NEWS.... Will check out The Hole, sounds very creepy indeed! A wonderful break to you too, and see you in workshop!
Tēnā koe, brother. My work year ends in about 30 minutes when our office opens some wine, bubbles, beer, juice and plain old agua and breaks out some comfort snacks. Will not work again until 12 Jan and am fully committed to full-scale relaxation, this being the first summer in 3 years we did not alight to the snowy Pacific Northwest. The Kiwi Summer is a thing of beauty and we are gonna embrace it anew.
I am not much for resolutions, but I have been threatening to write for oh, 20 years. Have a few drafts going on Substack and will polish them as I consider new topics and start sharing in 2026. Not for money - but for saying what I need to say. I think that's enough.
Wishing you and the Keane Klan a restful, relaxing, fun holiday break. See you on the other side.
Ngā mihi nui,
Brad
WORK DO!!! Have a deliciously taboo/awkward office beer or three for me, bro. Enjoy the break, and the proper summer! If it wasn't for this season I think I would have bailed on these islands years ago--can't imagine living without it now. Start writing! Come to a workshop (there's one about starting!) Or just...start writing at home! The secret to this Substack thing is to just start hitting send. I learn (and forget) every time. Say what needs saying. Amen. See you in '26, will holler when I get over the hill!
I am at a loss when I face the rise in the last 10 years or so of woke ethnonationalism and race essentialism, because it means that the great human desire and capability to remake oneself, to break off from the tribe and either join a new one or start one's own (look up schizmogenesis!), is now often seen only through the lens of privilege and appropriation. That there can be tolerated neither a liberal cosmopolitan subject nor one born through cross-national/racial/ethnic worker solidarity is a Nazi's wet dream -- and yet here we are, a globe increasingly made of xenophobes weakly opposed by an elite of trauma-informed segregationists, each wishing for a realm of purity and clear boundaries. When, in fact, humans are messy bitches all. We love mixing, we love stealing each other's best ideas, we love complaining about the people whose foods we can't stop eating. It's everything good we like about society. And yet it seems like we are determined to make it impossible to continue. So thank you Dan, quite sincerely, for standing up for cultural chameleons and adaptive weirdos. Have a great break!
Amen brother. Messy bitches all, indeed! The pendulum has swung way too far. Truth is that when I started at NYU Shanghai (2014) we were still in the late vapor trail of globalization, and when I taught cosmopolitanism I was usually critiquing the university's unquestioning embrace of the 'global.' At worst, it's a bunch of a rich Westerners patting themselves on the back for being born rich enough to travel, and tends to see anyone who doesn't travel as unequal, unenlightened, etc. Then Brexit & Trump happened, and China started locking up all the Uyghurs, and the world flipped. I realized (again) just how weird and counter-culture cosmopolitanism is, when done right & open to all! I guess my longer response to Sam's piece is that cosmopolitanism seems to feel truest and strongest *in opposition* to oppressive nationalism & identity rules, while once the doors are open things get gradually more and more puffy, tourism-based, a consumption of difference rather than a true embrace. I wish we'd settle somewhere in the middle. I don't know that we ever will. Purity sucks! Hybridity pa' siempre! Thanks so much for reading and your kind support this year. A grand holidy to you, sir!
Ngā mihi o te Kirihimete me te Tau Hou 🎄
Meri Kirihimete! Warm regards from here in Te Hūpēnui!
Meri Kirihemete, and a Happy New Year! Thank you for your writing, much appreciated.
And to you, sir! Thanks for all your support & comments & good vibes!
Happy holidays, sir!
Thanks for your posts Dan, I really look forward to seeing them pop up, you have a unique perspective on things that I enjoy reading from here in Oz across the ditch. I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, and have tried to see as much of it as possible over the last 30 years, and intend to continue to do so for as long as I can. Happy Christmas and New Year, enjoy your break.