Steven Parmenius

  I rather like the film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s Contact (a film I really should use in class!) because it touches on a subject I devote much of my time to. By this I do not mean aliens but history and whether it matters and in what way. I believe it was Stephan Daedalus who quipped that history was a nightmare from which he would awaken. I sometimes agree. Contact , however, never awakens from history for it does not know it is asleep. It does not understand its own presuppositions which are a-historical and perhaps even theological. The movie, of course, involves communicating with aliens though it does not treat this theme as subtly as the later Arrival by Denis Villeneuve. This is because it exists in the innocent dream time when history and language as constitutive problems did not exist for popular imagination. Aliens can speak to us in math because math is universal for all rational entities. [1] They can speak to us about physics too for physics describes the universal s

  What should be seen and not seen in spaces defined as ‘public’? I think common sense a guide that will do for most of us but the problem with common sense is that it is never quite enough of a guide. Say we define a certain space as ‘secular’ or ‘Canadian’ or ‘Christian’ or 'American’. It then becomes a real question what people who fall outside those descriptors owe such spaces. People who will generally tolerate the other, do so on the implicit principle that they do not have to see the other in spaces it defines as its own. I doubt many people in Quebec, to use one example, care that much if a person practices Islam or Sikhism. However, they seem to care very much if such people are part of their visual environment especially in places, like government offices, over which they feel some ownership.   This creates a dilemma for some but not for others. This is because certain religions demand visible marks of difference while others do not. This means ‘laicite’ laws (Law 21)  wi