Keen On

One of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended books for April was Mohamed Amer Meziane’s The States of the Earth. It sounded intriguing, if not entirely coherent, and so I invited Meziane on the show. Even now, I’m not sure I exactly get Meziane’s point. He seems to be saying that secularization is not only behind western racial colonialism but also the destruction of the land. It’s a provocative thesis, nonetheless, and Meziane, who teaches at Brown University, makes it with a flourish of rich historical anecdotes. Mohamed Amer Meziane is a philosopher, performer and professor at Brown University after teaching for 4 years at Columbia University. He is the author of The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization which won the Albertine Prize for non-fiction in 2023. His second book is titled: At the Edge of the Worlds: Towards a Metaphysical Anthropology.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentato