Iconic authors
Themes
Bibliography of the day
Renan, Fichte and the unfinished quarrel over what makes a nation
Language or consent, blood or plebiscite: the old debate over the nation is told as a duel between two models. Its own texts tell another story, in which the nation of will honors its founders and the nation of language doubts that parents alone could pass it on without political independence.
Cure the defect or keep the people, Graham Bell and the old project of making deafness disappear
19th-century reformers feared that schools for the deaf were breeding a deaf race. The numbers said otherwise, yet the campaign went on, against deaf marriages and against sign language. It never asked who should decide which lives need correcting.
