The Poetry of the Search Engine
Anna McCarthy
Online Features
Cruel Optimism: New Social Text Periscope Dossier
Social Text Collective
Lauren Berlant’s most recent book, Cruel Optimism (Duke UP, 2011), undertakes the ambitious and necessary project of thinking the political present. Cruel Optimism attends closely to what goes undernoticed about living in relation to waning or worn-out models of legibility, sovereignty and sustainability. This dossier assembles … Continue reading “Cruel Optimism: New Social Text Periscope Dossier”
Social Text Periscope on OWS
Ashley Dawson
Click here to read. On the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, Social Text is pleased to debut “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” a collection of original essays on horizontalism in theory and practice. Written and edited by faculty and graduate … Continue reading “Social Text Periscope on OWS”
The Touch of Flesh with Flesh
Balthazar Becker
Work Reviewed: Holland, Sharon Patricia. The Erotic Life of Racism. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2012. xii + 168 pp. Then she touched me, and then I did stop dead. […] I do not know. I know only that my entire … Continue reading “The Touch of Flesh with Flesh”
Untying Critical Making
Michael Mandiberg
I just untied my copy of Critical Making, edited by Garnet Hertz. When I pulled it from the hand addressed brown paper envelope I was startled by its handmade, twine-wrapped beauty. It has the spirit of an old school zine, … Continue reading “Untying Critical Making”
Experiments in Extra-Institutional Education
Michael Mandiberg
CUNY Graduate Center, Center for Humanities Apr 11, 2013, 6:30pm, room 9206 Education outside of a traditional classroom is on the rise. Again. Spurred on by DIY culture, a tidal wave of student debt, and changes in technology, new non-traditional … Continue reading “Experiments in Extra-Institutional Education”
On Icons and Their Critics
Nicholas Gamso
Bishnupriya Ghosh’s new book Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular is a thorough but at times confounding account of the Icon in our media-saturated global age. In her book, Ghosh treats dominant and popular representations of three women — Mother … Continue reading “On Icons and Their Critics”
The Sixties in a Cube
Anna McCarthy
We love our little objects. Perhaps you are reading this on yours, pinching and stroking the screen to enlarge the text. These physical interactions with the things themselves, with the actual media of media, are part of the history of … Continue reading “The Sixties in a Cube”
Digital Publishing Today
Social Text Collective
Graduate Center, CUNY — Center for Humanities Nov 26, 2012, 6:30pm | The Skylight Room (9100) Ashley Dawson, Matthew K. Gold, Michael Mandiberg, Tavia Nyong’o What are the radical possibilities of open access publishing? This panel will bring together a … Continue reading “Digital Publishing Today”
Hip Hop from ’48 Palestine: Youth, Music, and the Present/Absent
Sunaina Maira
The digital material presented here is meant to supplement the article “Hip Hop from ’48 Palestine: Youth, Music, and the Present/Absent” from the current issue of Social Text (30.3, Fall 2012). An abstract for the article can be read below.
The Queer Shamed and Shame Queered
Darnell Moore
Sex work, which I knew nothing about while standing with deep longing and trepidation moving in my body, was not what I intended to provide. No, I wanted to perform love work and traveling to the netherworld of ambiguity was, in my mind, well-worth it. I sought after liberation: freedom from the anxieties of heteronormativitity. And, if I am honest, I wanted to have boundless sex with another man in a “world” that did not create me, but in one that I created. And isn’t it the case that we, queers, are often in search of other worlds because we have been shamed in this one? Read more
Sensible Politics: Book Release
Social Text Collective
Zone Books is pleased to announce the publication of Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, edited by Meg McLagan and Yates McKee. Political acts are encoded in medial forms–feet marching on a street, punch holes on a card, … Continue reading “Sensible Politics: Book Release”
"Apophatic Sovereignty Before the Law at Guantanamo"
Social Text Collective
“Apophatic Sovereignty Before the Law at Guantanamo”
Allen Feldman
Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication
New York University
Date: Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Time: 6-8 PM
Location: 6 East 16th Street, Room 1103
SPONSORED BY THE POLITICS DEPARTMENT, NSSR
Occupy, Gaga
Victor P. Corona
Under review: J. Jack Halberstam. Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2012. The stardom of Lady Gaga has stimulated academic studies in ways that few celebrities typically have (aside from icons like Madonna and … Continue reading “Occupy, Gaga”
Transforming Society
David Gilbert
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2011), Nat Smith and Eric A. Stanley (eds.) Even though it was over 30 years ago, I remember well the anxiety about entering the penal system: how would I … Continue reading “Transforming Society”