Writers and missionaries w/ Adam Shatz

Adam Shatz joins PTO to talk about his new book, 'Writers and
Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination'. We talked about
why Adam, though a huge admirer of Edward Said and his classic work
Orientalism, feels that some of the work subsequently inspired by
Said has failed to give a well rounded picture of middle eastern
societies in all their complexity. We also talked about why Adam
thinks that there can be value in reading reactionary writers whose
politics we might abhor, and why nuance and complexity are not the
enemies of radical political commitment. Finally, we discussed the
ways in which early experiences of trauma can be the starting point
for creativity.