Kushnerism: Gaza Gentrification Means Palestinian GenocideMark DriscollUrban renewal means Negro removal. –James Baldwin The concept of gentrification was pioneered by the sociologist Ruth Glass (1912-1990) to depict rapidly upscaling London neighborhoods in the 1950s. What she had earlier called a “middle class invasion” became more … Continue reading "Kushnerism: Gaza Gentrification Means Palestinian Genocide"
On Henrike Kohpeiß’s Bourgeois ColdnessLilly MarkakiJust out with Divided, Henrike Kohpeiß’s Bourgeois Coldness stages an encounter between critical theory and Black studies to offer a diagnosis of an affective condition and social technique that, she argues, structures and sustains the still-colonial present. Bourgeois coldness names … Continue reading "On Henrike Kohpeiß’s Bourgeois Coldness"
On Nouri Gana’s Melancholy ActsLaila RiaziIn his collection of essays, Reflections on Exile (2000), the late political activist and professor of comparative literature Edward Said generalized about the Arab condition after the Nakba of 1948 (the name given to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from … Continue reading "On Nouri Gana’s Melancholy Acts"
From the Classroom to Gaza: Belated Narratives and the Shared Struggle for FreedomSumaya HajIn my undergraduate course Criticism: Theory and Practice, at Birzeit University—a course that introduces students to the building blocks of literary form—we read A. E. Housman’s poem “The Grizzly Bear.” The Housman poem reads: The Grizzly Bear is huge and … Continue reading "From the Classroom to Gaza: Belated Narratives and the Shared Struggle for Freedom"
A Hundred Years of Coloniality: Sedulur Sikep and Fitri DK’s Nyawiji Ibu BumiAmos UrsiaFitri DK: Nyawiji Ibu Bumi at Cemeti Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta, Juni 13 – August 9, 2025 Emerging reports in a 1930 Dutch East Indies newspaper described the Samin movement, an anti-colonial messianic movement that spread throughout Java. … Continue reading "A Hundred Years of Coloniality: Sedulur Sikep and Fitri DK’s Nyawiji Ibu Bumi"
Black Limbs, White Laws: On Patricia J. Williams’s The Miracle of the Black LegLilly MarkakiPatricia J. Williams’s The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law (The New Press, 2024) opens with a meditation on bodily and spiritual integrity, the distinction between constitutional and contractual law, … Continue reading "Black Limbs, White Laws: On Patricia J. Williams’s The Miracle of the Black Leg"
Two Poems from NeutrøisSyd ZolfD&G&KRAFFT-EBING masculine days of dumbfounded machinic reserve an hour and a body wanting on animal street oxycephalic wolves and someone sequencing meat some father’s involution from pelvis to rough old they a composition probably watching the horse fish … Continue reading "Two Poems from Neutrøis"
A Review of Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman’s Millennial StyleMarc RidgellAliyyah Abdur-Rahman’s Millennial Style: The Politics of Experiment in Contemporary African Diasporic Culture (Duke University Press, 2024) astutely valorizes the speculative power and experimentation practices of black feminist and queer writers and artists who have produced works since the 1980s, … Continue reading "A Review of Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman’s Millennial Style"