Different Quote by Elliott Colla

“Each discipline has the capacity to be interested in politics, and each would ask different questions of what politics is, what constitutes power, how power is maintained, how it circulates, how relationships are formed, how institutions are built, how they fall. Every discipline would answer…” quote by Elliott Colla — Download Open image

“Each discipline has the capacity to be interested in politics, and each would ask different questions of what politics is, what constitutes power, how power is maintained, how it circulates, how relationships are formed, how institutions are built, how they fall. Every discipline would answer those questions in different ways.”

Elliott Colla

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More by Elliott Colla

In the Green Zone in Iraq you have your radio, you have your food, you have your own electricity, your own toilets. Everything is…

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There are certainly times in history where power associates itself closely with fields that we would call the humanities, like rulers surrounding themselves with…

Elliott Colla

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A high-ranking Syrian official in DC laughed when he heard I was reading Michel Aflaq and writing this book. He said, "Let me tell you something. There are no Baathists, no one believes this stuff, this is stuff you read in school because it's assigned to you. Maybe someone believed it, but no one really believes it." And I thought…

Elliott Colla

Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference.

Elliott Colla

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Noir is where the clarity of moral divisions break down, the black and whites turn into grays.

Elliott Colla

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In translation studies we talk about domestication - translation styles that make something familiar - or estrangement - translation styles that make something radically different. I use a lot of both in my translation, and modernism does both. For instance, if you look at the way James Joyce presents Ulysses, is that domesticating a classic? Think of it as an…

Elliott Colla

You always have regime-friendly poets like Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, whose career basically spans the twentieth century. He's an anti-imperialist, friendly with the Communists, and somehow survives all that and is shuttling between Baghdad and Damascus depending on which way the winds are blowing with the Baathists and their competition. But he's not a regime stooge, he's independent.

Elliott Colla

Take Ezra Pound's translations of poetry from Chinese. He doesn't really know Chinese, and the very strange results that he comes up with aren't…

Elliott Colla

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Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have…

Elliott Colla

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Michel Aflaq - is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics.

Elliott Colla

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The more I've reflected on that and asked Iraqi friends, the more I realize that the corruption in Iraq has nothing to do with ideas - it has to do with the regime and institutional structures and power. There's no core to what Michel Aflaq has to say that results in this. That was a key to looking at Michel…

Elliott Colla

Culture is invited to the table usually only as raw material that needs no analysis.

Elliott Colla

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Explore all 41 Elliott Colla quotes

More Different quotes

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of…

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Well, The Day the Earth Caught Fire was a story... I don't if anybody knows what it is but it was about... in the…

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Some shows just go away - and that's fine. They serve their purpose and their entertainment value, but there are shows that touch people…

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I love casting against type and doing things you wouldn't expect, because I think you get more interesting performances that way. Hollywood loves to…

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One of the reasons that I do a lot of different kinds of pictures is because I learn a lot when I'm doing them.

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I painted the words "GREAT ADVENTURE" in Beijing, Dallas, San Francisco, Copenhagen, and Japan. What it means to me is completely different to everybody else. And that's what I love about random words and phrases taken out of context: everyone applies their own context. If you want to apply something political or meaningful to a word I wrote on the…

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I'm 38 and I'm single, and I'm having my most intense and gratifying relationship with a dog. But we all learn about love in…

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I think a business guy is different from an artist. They walk different paths. Artists create the best outputs when they're having fun. And…

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If you have a different mindset, you will have a different outcome: if you make different choices from your peers, your life will then…

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Suffering did different things to different people...Some souls became tempered, unshakable in their faith, while others became twisted and mis-shapen, throwing off all connection…

Naomi Ragen