Comments policy

We welcome telegraphic – concise and direct – responses to our contributors’ work. Our words here are carefully chosen though: we invite responses rather than reactions (the former being things more thoughtful, more considered, than the comments one too often sees on blogs). What we’d like to facilitate is dialogue properly so-called, and so we encourage interpretive charity, that is, a will to patiently understand and comprehend, rather than too easily judge and condemn: pull at loose threads, not to unravel but to weave something new. This is not to say that we’re ‘against evaluation’, ‘opposed to criticism’ or whatever, but, rather, that we discourage those pyrotechnic critiques – undeserving of the name – which dazzle but in the final analysis generate more heat than light. And it should go without saying that while passionate dissent, debate and discussion are one thing, defamatory and libellous comments, ad hominem arguments, hate-speech, etc. are another. The latter will of course not be tolerated, nor will anonymous comments, extraneous/off-topic posts, advertising material and links to commercial sites.