A politician, a pastor and an academic walk into a bar… Interestingly enough, today’s article features three people that I’ve not yet met in person! I met Frank on Facebook through a friend suggestion from my pal, Richard Dufault. He said “You’ve gotta meet this guy – he’s a blogger, a pastor, a gamer, and overall cool dude”. And he was right!   Throughout the past couple of years, I’ve written several letters to MPP Yasir Naqvi to express my political views or to ask questions (c’mon people, engage your local representatives!).  Though I may not have always agreed with his responses, I commend him greatly for always getting back to me promptly.  I asked him to participate in this series last year and I asked him again this year!  And finally, I met Allan through Kel Parsons.  He’s a witty, witty man.  And hilarious.  And I hear he looks great in tights.

Frank Emmanuel – Pastor

Book of 2010: “The Definitive HP Lovecraft” by HP Lovecraft

I bought a Kindle this year to help with all the academic reading I am doing to write my doctoral thesis. Of course having an eReader means finding out what free books are available. I hadn’t read any Lovecraft for many years, but was tickled to see so many of his stories available. I got hooked. What really captivates me is not the sometimes dated writing, but the fantastic formula which Lovecraft employed. His characters are always incredibly curious, academics mostly, with an insatiable thirst to understand. When that quest to understand uncovers something unthinkable – that is where Lovecraft is brilliant. The characters cannot let it go. They have to plumb the depths until their very sanity is shaken loose. The journey this takes these characters on is simply delicious.

Check out his blog here: freedompastor.blogspot.com

Yasir Naqvi – MPP Ottawa Centre

Book of 2010: “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson

This book was heartwarming and inspiring. To hear Greg recount his stories of establishing schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan left me awestruck. His compassion and understanding gave me a new perspective on development in conflict areas and a much deeper appreciation for the struggles of millions of people everyday.

I would highly recommend that everyone read this book. Not only will it help you to better understand some of the ongoing conflicts facing our world today, but it will inspire you to get involved and give back. If one man can give up everything he has to build a school in remote Afghanistan, imagine what we could accomplish if we all just gave a little.

Check out MPP Yasir Naqvi’s website here: http://www.yasirnaqvimpp.ca/

Allan Pero-Aylen – Dept of English, University of Western Ontario

Book of 2010: “Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics” by Jacques Rancière

Rancière’s book, which reproduces at least one essay from his earlier title Aesthetics and Its Discontents, is my pick. It is an urgent, but by no means strident or hectic investigation of the complex relationship between aesthetics and politics. Rather than view these concepts as somehow opposite or mutually exclusive, Rancière insists, as he has in several different volumes, that to think about the connections between aesthetics and politics does not mean that one simply turns art into political propaganda or reduces politics to aesthetic spectacle. In an age in which we are massaged and bombarded by images which on the one hand attempt to soothe and entertain us into passivity, while on the other try to terrify us into believing that war, greed, cutbacks, xenophobia, and the rise of the police state are our only hopes in maintaining the status quo, Rancière offers several crucial critiques which open up avenues for thought and discussion—and yes, even dissension. He argues persuasively that aesthetics and politics are precisely the means by which to resist and criticise the ways in which individuals and communities are assigned particular and exclusive functions in a society, that we needn’t (and shouldn’t) view ourselves as economic counters, as demographics, as mere bargaining chips in a game we are allowed no real stake in, and whose rules remain obscure and arbitrary. Dissensus, in his view, is not empty violence, or narcissistic whining; it is a means of questioning the modes of consensus which attempt to mask or paper over the ways in which ways of making the world do not produce a one-to-one correspondence with how we perceive or experience the world we have made (or has been made for us). Those processes which people claim to be aesthetics and politics, but work only to produce or worsen inequality, are brutalist activities not worthy of the name. Aesthetics and politics, for him, are separate processes by which we try to produce equality; the effects of these processes—and more specifically, the effects of the aesthetics of politics—are measured by the degree and kinds of equality they help make appear—those times and moments when we become people again, and not mere cogs in the machine of a particular ideology. Equality then, is not something we can simply or necessarily assume as inherently democratic; instead, equality is something which must be demonstrated, time and again. The essays in this volume offer fascinating, compelling readings of diverse problems like human rights, the value of aesthetics in political action, 9/11 and its aftermath, and the intimate relationship between war and its handmaiden, consensus. Rancière is a fascinating, clear-eyed, and a brilliant Geiger counter for bullshit and obscurantism; what’s more, he offers ways of exploring ideas that tell us not what to think, but how to think. I highly recommend him.