Colton A. Valentine
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A Year in Quotes from the Humanities
Another year passes, and another series of bizarre, contradictory, yet oddly poignant speech acts have been enunciated by our faculty members and section kids.
Unspeakably Aged
I have tried to discern why we felt and feel so old: why HAA membership smacks of the AARP; why my friends talk of penultimate experiences as if commencement will bring coffins, not diplomas; why I perceive habits and flippant acts ossifying into destiny.
Riding Out of Time at ‘Hamilton’ SoulCycle
One had to wonder, of course, just how much POC-“Hamilton”-struggle was really going on in this room. And as the song “Helpless” cued, the messy knot of racial, socioeconomic, and gender politics only continued to tighten.
Being Alone
Last summer, I spent a month traveling alone, and two catastrophic events took place. In Belgrade I ran out of books—except for Martin Heidegger’s easy-breezy beach-read “Being and Time”—and in Sarajevo I got food poisoning. This meant that I spent my last 72 hours in the Balkans alone in my room, vomiting garlic-soaked lamb’s head, with nothing to do but read Heidegger. This was a terrible experience. But in the weird interplay between being alone and “Being and Time,” I came to understand why it was terrible—and that it might be for a good reason.
Pavić in Process
I’d been told to “swim” in the intellectual environment, to identify with the author and his sources, rather than scoop out what I wanted with my usual external and surgical precision.
Around Town: Cambridge Bars
With campus social culture having reached the all-time low of referenda colonizing Pusey Library, it seems time to venture out of the Harvard bubble, to get out with a few friends, and rearrange the sensible.
Humanities Buzzwords
FM compiles a brief abridged lexicon for easy midnight-hour use.
Quotes from the Humanities
Take a breath, relax, and relive the humanists at their linguistic bests.
Spring Break Postcard: Orbs in Cancun
I landed in Cancun ready to embrace a cliché. There were no plans except to set aside the haughty, critical coldness of Cambridge and indulge in that undergraduate tropical escape narrative that is Mexico for Spring Break.
PLUR As Told By Heidegger
Chances are if you’re reading The Harvard Crimson, you’ve never heard of Peace Love Unity Respect. The acronym is a silly combination of sounds—a feline’s pleasure with an extra letter snuck in—and the cliché it stands for wouldn't last a minute in college classrooms. But since the ’90s, PLUR’s been a credo and a life philosophy for rave subculture. This summer it became my personal mantra. This fall I’ve decided it was Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger’s as well.
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