Night School

This week we take a critical look at the recent storm around cultural appropriation, its historical legacy and relevance to our context. Umapagan Ampikaipakan alongside literary legend Chuah Guat Eng joins us to explore the questions and implications.

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This week, Jessica Wong joins us to meditate on the difficulties and rewards of forgiveness. We reference Stephanie Dowrick's powerful book "Forgiveness and other Acts of Love" along the way.

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Sharaad is back! This week, we turn to Marx and Freud to take a critical look at the politics of fetishes. From the bedroom to the boardroom, we review how our ideological and illusory attachments to objects and their purported metaphysical value reveal the quirky sides of human vanity and confidence in progress. (Also, Fuad apologises for using the term "bodily organs" when he just needed to say "body parts").

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With more and more cities all over the globe looking and feeling similar, we ponder on what that might mean for our understanding of space and identity. Nazmi Anuar offers his insights via an exposition of Rem Koolhaas' influential essay 'The Generic City'.

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We enter the world of student zines with the help of the team behind Students in Resistance. They share their project while locating it in the broader context of Malaysian social change and private campus politics, among other things.

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What's the connection between art and religion? How has it evolved over time? Can contemporary art address spirituality in a socially impactful way? We reflect on these questions this week with a lot of help from Genevieve Gamache.

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USM political scientist Azmil Tayeb shares insights from his field work journeys through Indonesian religious high schools or 'pesantrens' as they are more widely known. How is religious education conceived and designed differently in Indonesia in ways that contribute to a more open discourse than we have in Malaysia? Have a listen and find out!

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With so much confusion, inaccuracies and mystification surrounding ancient Kedah, we are fortunate to be joined by USM Archaeologist, Nasha Khaw to set the record straight. We also discuss why archaeology is fun, among other things!

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We welcome Tony See of the National University of Singapore again this week to explore the political implications of Gilles Deleuze's theory of desire. How can a more critical understanding of desire become a focal point for a new alternative politics?

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In this episode, we discuss the basics of curating. What do curators do, exactly? How has this profession evolved over time? What is the relationship between curator, artist and project? We end with some reflections on how art should intersect with broader questions of politics and history. Ong Jo-Lene and Merv Espina lead the way.

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