On Julie Beth Napolin’s The Fact of ResonanceAmber Jamilla MusserIn a moment when the voices of the oppressed are ringing out across the world, Julie Beth Napolin’s The Fact of Resonance brings us toward the literary beginnings of modernism so that we can learn to listen for difference, which … Continue reading "On Julie Beth Napolin’s The Fact of Resonance"
The Politics of Aesthetics in Anticolonial Thought: A Review of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance by Sandra RuizJohn AndrewsFrankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse observes that “Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle” (72). This, in short, … Continue reading "The Politics of Aesthetics in Anticolonial Thought: A Review of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance by Sandra Ruiz"
On Free Jazz CommunismGabriel BristowJazz, declared saxophonist Archie Shepp in 1966, “is anti-war; it is opposed to [the war in] Vietnam; it is for Cuba; it is for the liberation of all people. That is the nature of jazz. That’s not far fetched. Why … Continue reading "On Free Jazz Communism"
On Marquis Bey’s Anarcho-BlacknessAndrew CutroneMarquis Bey’s Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism (AK Press, 2020) is (a) concise, necessarily unsettling, Black anarchist work. Here, the propinquity between “Black” and “anarchist” may confuse the reader, as the Black radical tradition and anarchist politics are not … Continue reading "On Marquis Bey’s Anarcho-Blackness"
EyelinesStephen IraWhen director Richard Williams set out to make Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in 1988, no one had really attempted anything like it before. Although, of course, people had. If you’re anything like me, for example, you remember the several extraneous … Continue reading "Eyelines"
A Love StoryAsa MendelsohnMy shoulders stiffen the first time I watch Southern Comfort (2001), the film Kate Davis made documenting the last year of Robert Eads’s life. I am aware of the eyes and bodies in attendance, late 2018. I notice my companions … Continue reading "A Love Story"
Utopia in BlackSmaran DayalThe year is 1974, the place is Central Park. The jazz musician and iconoclast Sun Ra appears in the park’s band shell “with a hundred musicians, including six drummers, ten bass players, ten trumpets, ten trombones, and three French horns.” … Continue reading "Utopia in Black"
On The Black Aesthetic Season III: Black InteriorsYasmina PriceHow can a short, single, stable text account for a set of interpersonal, collective, cinematically ephemeral experiences? In mathematics, a fractal is a geometrical figure in which each part has the same statistical character as the whole. The Black Aesthetic, … Continue reading "On The Black Aesthetic Season III: Black Interiors"