In 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“
In 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”
Fitri 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“
Patricia 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“
D&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“
Aliyyah 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”
This special issue of Social Text critically thinks through how models of contemporary platforms such as Amazon or Google are reproductions of colonial capitalist enterprises such as The East India Company. Authors are invited to engage the field of digital … Continue reading “Call for Papers: Colonial Studies of the Platform”
Social Text remembers the life and work of Fredric Jameson, one of our founding editors. Read an interview with Fredric Jameson and materials about his work establishing the journal here. Read a 2016 interview and a special issue that considers … Continue reading “Remembering Fredric Jameson”
For Capitalism is the Sophisticated and Materialized Form of the Hatred of Man and of his Body. -François Guéry and Didier Deleule In 2023, the trend “Films if they were directed by Wes Anderson” began to gain popularity on TikTok. … Continue reading “The Productive Body Dismembered: Creative Labor and AI Art”
Really it’s just that time has passed, what was green Is now orange This poem compares the seasons And philosophizes beauty in the form of strands I think I owe my boss a hello I think I owe him … Continue reading “The problem with beauty is that it convinces me of achievement”
As a collective of scholars based at academic institutions in and around New York City, we stand in solidarity with students and faculty practicing peaceful protest at Columbia, Barnard, CUNY, NYU, Cornell, the New School, and all across the country. … Continue reading “Statement on Student Repression at Columbia University”
In Itamar Moses’s new play The Ally, the “trickiest question”—“whether the fight against anti-Semitism belongs as a coequal branch of the social justice movement”—is itself a kind of trick question. Articulated through Moses’s academic alter ego in the play, Asaf … Continue reading “Parsing the Jewish American Complex”
Zionism’s Political Unconscious by Nadia Abu El-Haj Verso Blog A Feminism That Embraces Humanity by Lila Abu-Lughod Critical Inquiry Seeing Genocide: Israel’s Weaponization of Images Since October 7 Obfuscates Its Genocidal Campaign against Palestinians by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay Boston Review … Continue reading “Amplifier”
In the fall of 2023, it is a bit late to be reviewing Stacy Szymaszek’s Famous Hermits, which came out months ago. But that does not matter so much. In fact, there are parts of Famous Hermits that seem already … Continue reading “On Famous Hermits by Stacy Szymaszek”
Hot Dish Since under, I had spoken one word a day To a complement a meal, I would utter, ‘Breakfast,’ ‘Lunch,’ or ‘Dinner.’ To move from coming, I speak slighter Worded widely that the cheeks bled, Spinning trellises before … Continue reading “Three Poems”
