Issue: Issue 097

This article explores a key trope of economic stagnation and chronic joblessness in postcolonial Senegal: the image of “lazy” young men in the public sphere. This civic and moral discourse is critical of young men who allegedly drink tea “all … Continue reading “Killing Time”

December 28, 2009 | Features

This essay argues that the public utility, particularly electricity supply, signifies powerfully as a form of social recognition, a basic human right, and a model of civic inclusion and citizenship in the modern and postcolonial Bildungsroman. James Joyce’s A PORTRAIT … Continue reading “Light Reading: Public Utility, Urban Fiction, and Human Rights”

December 28, 2009 | Features

Saartjie Baartman’s story has become central to black feminist theory and politics, serving as the primary analytic vehicle for explaining the violence that the dominant visual field inflicts on black female bodies. The re-telling of Baartman’s story has also provided … Continue reading “Strange Bedfellows: Black Feminism and Antipornography Feminism”

December 28, 2009 | Features

This article argues for a different academic practice in relation to social movements, asking scholars to be more deliberate about acknowledging the specifically intellectual contributions of activisms. It notes that much of the new theoretical work in the United States … Continue reading “Activisms and Epistemologies: Problems for Transnationalisms”

December 28, 2009 | Features

This essay moves to investigate the co-constitution of “the child” and “the secular.” Twins of modernity, “the child” and “the secular” underwrite moral claims about progress, the universal human, and the ordering of time itself. These moral claims are carried … Continue reading “"What Do Children Learn at School?": Necropedagogy and the Future of the Dead Child”

December 28, 2009 | Features