The Hedgehog Review offers critical reflections on cultural identity, change, and diversity; seeking to understand how we shape culture, and how culture shapes us.  

The Hedgehog Review

Have our written words lost their significance in modern times?

The simple frictionless design of modern technology has made the world more convenient, but our ability to continuously update our online profiles has also taken away the meaning of our words. Richard Hughes Gibson contemplates the importance of resistance in writing and how it can offer significant opportunities for self-reflection in a world of constant oversharing.

“Frictionless environments give us the false sense that we can stay on top of things all by ourselves. But against that often destructive delusion we can cultivate a healthy sense of humility about what we know, what we ought to share, when we need to speak up. That humility, in turn, may lead us to seek out a still better source of friction, the counsel of others — trusted friends, a fellow writer or scholar, or maybe even an editor — before we weigh in on the topic du jour. The baleful social effects of the frictionless sharing approach are increasingly plain. Now is the time to waste more words in hopes of sharing better ones.”

Gary Furlong

An appeal for friction writing

Anne Applebaum's latest book is a "six-chapter journey of privilege and loss."

In The Hedgehog Review, researcher Jonathan D. Teubner reviews Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism", where the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian charts the evolution of her own centre-right liberalism.

"Our populist narratives, often driven by a kind of economic determinism, would suggest that the haves of Berlin and the have-nots of Brandenburg would clash. Yet there has been very little populist animosity aimed at the citadel of Berlin from the fields of Brandenburg. But why is this? Why do such divisions spark revolt in some regions, while in others, people, well, get on with it? Why do some democracies seem fragile, teetering on the edge of collapse, while others appear robust even in the midst of the unprecedented challenges of widespread disease, joblessness, and general discontent?"

Michael Satow

Another betrayal of the intellectuals

Whether a crisis of public health or public safety, is the best response increased surveillance?

When the pandemic hit the West in March 2020, Zoom and other types of digital communications became a first-response-type to the crisis it had ensued. Almost a year later, what was a silver lining for human interaction has turned into the thing of nightmares for many. For author Christine Rosen, this highlights one thing: tech doesn't solve deeper human issues. In this piece for The Hedgehog Review, she explains why.

"The appeal of technosolutionism is understandable, particularly in a time of increased political polarization, social unrest, and, now, a public health crisis. Technosolutionism alleviates widespread anxiety by promising certainty when uncertainty prevails. It offers efficient responses to complex problems while eliding thorny questions of ethics, politics, or justice. It gives us the how without forcing us to ask the why."

This story was originally published in The Hedgehog Review in the fall of 2020.

Betsy Foldes Meiman

Technosolutionism isn’t the fix

The case for collecting books.

Why do we keep books even though we may never read them, read them again and we only really love a few of them? Nan Z. Da finds in The Hedgehog Review that books, reading, and literature cultivate “a way of being in time.”

Rex Anderson

Good on paper

Online shaming, cancel culture. It's easy to turn someone into an instant monster.

Vanessa Place is a lawyer specialising in representing sex offenders on appeal. In The Hedgehog Review, she examines the ease with which we characterise people as monsters — and how this says just as much about us, as them.

Marni Penning

Monstering

Exploring the relationship between a mother and her child through childhood psychoanalysis.

Motherhood is supposed to be all-encompassing and all-transforming. But now, women are also required to maintain their sense of self, through their relationships, their jobs, their bodies — as a sign that they love their children enough to be good role models. Claire Jarvis examines this in The Hedgehog Review.

Andi Arndt

Tell me about your Mother

Ethically, how are we to evaluate the practice of getting stoned?

The public conversation around marijuana seems to have shifted entirely from being about its ramifications in liberal law, to now focusing purely on what does it do to our health. In this interesting piece from The Hedgehog Review, author James Mumford reflects on what change means to society, as well as his relationship with cannabis.

Cannabis as a cultural question

Monopoly and culture in the Digital Age.

They distort financial markets, endanger innovation and intrude on your privacy. Google; Facebook; Apple; Amazon; Microsoft. How afraid are you of the Frightful Five? Edward Tenner reveals in The Hedgehog Review, the true implications of the largest tech companies’ growing monopolistic power.

Who’s afraid of the frightful five?

Should the monuments of history's darkest figures be pulled down?

James McWilliams writing in The Hedgehog Review explores the debate and the argument that statues to Confederate generals and famous slaveholders should stand tall in order to force white people to feel shame. 

Scott Ciscon

Shame: an argument for preserving 'those' monuments

Imagine there are no countries…

"We have not found an adequate substitute for the nation-state, whether by seeking it through the consolidation of existing polities into ever more massive postnational entities like the EU, or by allowing nations to disaggregate into homogeneous and even tribal entities." Wilfred M. McClay considers in The Hedgehog Review the fading vision of a world without nations.

Karl Miller

Why nations matter: the state of belonging

M.F.K Fisher on existing without many of the things we have always accepted as our due.

Laurel Berger, for The Hedgehog Review, revisits How to Cook a Wolf, MFK Fisher’s darkly funny yet practical ‘self-help' book and kitchen guide for the hard-up — which feels especially relevant in a pandemic.

Kelsey Navarro

How to Cook a Wolf under lockdown

Race is an absurdity. Yet as a means of defining and separating people, it retains its power.

W. Ralph Eubanks author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road, writing in The Hedgehog Review shares this personal story about growing up in an interracial family in America's South.

Ron Butler

What makes me black? What makes you white?

A moving reflection from an imprisoned men on the correctional facility he spent ten years in.

John J. Lennon is currently serving a 28 years to life sentence. In this piece from The Hedgehog Review, he reflects on Heather Ann Thompson’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning book titled Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, about the correctional facility in which Lennon served ten years of his sentence.

A legacy of payback: the Attica Uprising

Moral growth doesn't just mean looking to the future but reconciling past and present selfhood.

"To test your commitment to the philosophy of no regrets, imagine, as Friedrich Nietzsche suggests, that a demon comes to find you 'in your loneliest loneliness' to tell you that you will repeat all your actions, past and future, in exact sequence, an infinite number of times. Even the demon's visit, and your response to it, will recur forever. 'Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?' Nietzsche asks. 'Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?'" Jonathan Malesic explores in The Hedgehog Review.

Ken Foster

Je regrette tout

"The necessity of physical distancing creates the need to find new ways to be close to one another."

"Distance tends to be conceptualized as either a problem for living in modern societies and so something to overcome, or, conversely, as a solution to some of the problems in modern societies and so something to be cultivated. In the current crisis, we see that these two approaches can go together: There is the necessity of social distancing but also the need to overcome interpersonal, cultural, and spatial distances in an effort to slow the spread of the virus." Author Marie Kolkenbrock analyses in The Hedgehog Review.

Monita Rajpal

The dance of the porcupines

Vampire and zombie stories have dreamt themselves into us for specific reasons.

Associate professor of philosophy at Catholic University in Washington, Antón Barba-Kay, delves deeper into the mythology behind vampire and zombies stories. Here, he analyses how they have become part of a 'new folklore', and why they have resonated so strongly with modern audiences.

Chris Brinkley

Our mindless and our damned

In Christian music, the line between sacred and secular can be blurred.

Paul W. Gleason, writing in The Hedgehog Review, offers an analysis of the 2018 book, The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll, by Randall J. Stephens.

Shout at the devil: How Christians inspired, condemned, and embraced Rock ’n’ Roll

True crime is not all about watching people die, but it does require an interest in the subject.

Senior editor of The Hedgehog Review, B.D. McClay, analyses where exactly does our interest in true crime stories and blood sports comes from.

Blood sports

How to confront our biases when it comes to plant intelligence.

"Intelligence, however, is more than consciousness; it is also the ability to acquire and apply knowledge, to learn. Marder says that at least some plants can learn, citing a 1999 Dutch study in which lima bean plants were observed summoning insects as allies against organisms harmful to the plants." Amy Wright, writing in The Hedgehog Review, explores.

Sarah Naughton

Learning from plants

Are outdated views holding us back from seeing the world in all its grey?

"There is black and there is white; there is right and there is wrong."  Writing in the Hedgehog Review, Mark Edmundson explains the urgent problem with our tendency to hold increasing rigid and oppositional views - encouraging us, instead, to see the world in all its nuanced complexity.

It’s complicated

By embracing its counter-narrative, the Great American Novel can achieve its potential.

In an era of rising social division, the Great American Novel has found itself back at the fore. Tyler Malone writing in the Hedgehog Review reflects on the literature's ambition of uniting and defining a nation and why it's still so relevant.