A journey through The Nature of Blood's places

Places seem to shape our existence. Human life is based on moments connected to a specific temporal and spatial fragment. As S. R, Sanders, in his book Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World(1994), has pointed out: 

“In belonging to a landscape, one feels a rightness, at-homeness, a knitting of self and world. This condition of clarity and focus, this being fully present, is akin to what the Buddhists call mindfulness, what Christian contemplatives refer to as recollection, what Quakers call centering down. I am suspicious of any philosophy that would separate this-worldly from other-worldly commitment. There is only one world, and we participate in it here and now, in our flesh and our place”. 

Hospitality and Mobilities

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!". He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. 

Bram Stoker, Dracula.

Trip to the Venetian Ghetto

Blood: A critique of Christianity

Blood: A Critique of Christianity - Gil Anidjar Blood, in Gil Anidjar's argument, maps the singular history of Christianity. A category for historical analysis, blood can be seen through its literal and metaphorical uses as determining, sometimes even defining, Western culture, politics, and social practices and their wide-ranging incarnations in nationalism, capitalism, and law. In Part One. The Vampire State, Anidjar analyzes the role of blood in medieval Christianity and its subsequent influence on the Western civilization- in particular how it founded and shaped the three fundamental concepts of modernity: nation, state and capital. In Part Two. Hematologies, Anidjar explores the space occupied by blood in the literary canon of the Western world, engaging with Greek culture, philosophy and psychoanalysis

What's so special about blood?

Migration and Identity: Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Migration and identity are relevant topics in Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The plot evolves around Changez, a Pakistani migrant in America, who struggles between two identities and is torn between the clash of two different worlds. As a matter of fact, after 9/11 and the following invasion of Afghanistan, he starts to resent America and he feels a crippling sense of displacement. His disillusionment will lead him back to his native country.

Personal experience as a migrant in Italy

      As a migrant in Italy, I have had a chance to view many different things. The first and the foremost among them was my sense of alienation. Being an alien, I had to acquaint myself with the new culture which is a European culture; the culture that is much different in almost every respect from the oriental culture. It led me to be a man of inquisitive nature. I kept on enquiring about things whether it was purchasing a train ticket or food articles. I had to see novel things in almost every aspect of the life. If there was a construction in progress in a building, I would keep looking at it and observed things objectively to know how far was it different than the place of my origin. They are just a few of the instances which has had an effect upon my sensibilities in my day to day life in Italy.

Videos demonstrating the impacts of 9/11 on Muslim immigrants