oc6

who does language belong to? who owns the rights to a particular tongue, dialect, or vernacular? can you gate-keep language? for my dissertation on palestinian hip-hop in israel and the diaspora, i've had to do some research on AAVE: african american vernacular english, the dialect spoken among many african americans within their communities, and the …

oc4

because we can never know the essence of things, but cannot help but sense them, we must take however imprecise a stab at them, create something pseudo-reflective of the unnamable, and put it out there, to see if anyone recognizes it. on the level of personal expression, that is art, on the level of the collective, nationhood.

oc3

the post-blast period has been a weird one for every lebanese person, even the diaspora ones with a less-than-mild attachment to the motherland. for the first few weeks after it happened, i had friends texting and calling me from all over the world, people i haven't spoken to months or years, some people i haven't …

oc2

today i want to address something that continues to weigh heavily on my mind: the inherent problem of history, which is the very way it’s been told. it has risen like an endless wave, starting from something small—a phoenician ship that washes up on a roman shore. a group of seamen know a carthaginian sail, …

oc1

because 'art' can be a reductive notion, i've decided to start a new 'thread' (if you will) on culture in general. the word 'culture' suggests a myriad of things--it could range from having heavily religious implications to referring to the creative or industrial production of a society. even within the productive sector, different subcultures emerge: …