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'We must always be cognizant of the power dynamics that give rise to cultural appropriation and the politics of race and colonial privilege in Canada and that continue to exist. Indigenous peoples have been marginalized, stereotyped and maligned for centuries. Real reconciliation and decolonization must include acknowledgement and redress of this historic and current reality.' from a statement from the Canada Council for the Arts It is a commonplace that when some of us look at works of contemporary art, whether music (John Cage comes to mind), dance (the work of Jerome Bel for example) or visual art (any of a number of abstract painters) the response often is ‘Anyone could do that’. The surprising thing then, is that not many actually do. There was the silence, the space between notes, the pile of old tee shirts, the pigments, just lying there, for centuries before Cage, Bel and Rothko came along. It is remarkably difficult to make anything. But that is the artist’s task. ...
Jagmeet Singh, a follower of the Sikh religion and the newly appointed leader of the NDP, said "Fundamentally, we can't have the state telling people what to wear, what not to wear." Singh is responding to a recently approved Quebec law that would require citizens of this Canadian province to uncover their faces while giving or receiving public services.  But that isn't strictly true, is it? The 'state' often does tell people what to wear: it tells soldiers, police officers, and judges, for example. Construction workers have to wear hard hats, we all have to wear seatbelts.   More importantly, we all have to wear something . Nudity is not an option on the streets, on the bus, in the classroom, at the government office you go to the get your passport or your driver's license. It's interesting how things which seem to be diametrically opposite to each other share a number of qualities. Zero and infinity, for example, behave similarly when multi...
“Instances of woman behavior are not unknown that a feeble ‘no’ may mean a ‘yes’. If the parties are strangers, the same theory may not be applied…But same would not be the situation when parties are known to each other, are persons of letters and are intellectually/academically proficient, and if, in the past, there have been physical contacts. In such cases, it would be really difficult to decipher whether little or no resistance and a feeble ‘no’, was actually a denial of consent.” Delhi High Court Judge Ashutosh Kumar The padam 'Indendu vaccitivira' by Kshetrayya, a poet of the seventeenth century, starts with the woman saying to her lover, 'Why have you come here? Go away.' The conceit is that the man must have arrived at her house by mistake, somehow, as his mistress sarcastically points out, losing his way in the bright moonlight. In the little world of this dance, 'the parties are not strangers' and 'are persons of letters and are intellectual...