Incubation is a state between being born and being unborn, or un-alive, or not. It is a way of hitchhiking, which is a way of being between where you are and where you want to go. An immigrant is someone who is in between two countries—the country of origin and the country of destination. AndContinue reading “The Liminal in Bhanu Kapil’s “Incubation for Space Monsters””
Category Archives: poetry
Suburban Gothic
On cleaning days, my mother used to toss my brother and I out of the house. We weren’t allowed to return until evening, when the carpets would be groomed into neat rows by the vacuum, and the hardwood floors smelled like Pinesol. One such day, banished to the outdoors, my brother and I decided toContinue reading “Suburban Gothic”
The Users of Enchantment
In his (in?)famous book, The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim analyses classic fairy tales through the lens of Freud. He posits that the darker elements of these tales, now scrubbed and sparkled over by Disney, actually served to help children grapple with existential problems such as separation anxiety, oedipal conflict, and sibling rivalry. I readContinue reading “The Users of Enchantment”