On the eve of Ghana’s fateful loss to Uruguay in the quarterfinals, South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, declared them the Black Stars of Africa. Locals joined their compatriots across the continent in willing the Black Stars on. … Continue reading “Africa's World Cup?”
Social Text collective member José Muñoz will be among the presenters at this state of the field conference on performance, to be held July 8th – 10th, 2010, at the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Click here for the full conference program.
Football fans can be divided, somewhat crudely, into two categories: those attracted to the game for aesthetic gratification; and those whose fandom is rather driven by feelings of group solidarity. These categories are not mutually exclusive. A beautiful move acquires even greater beauty when performed by a player or team with whom one identifies; feelings of solidarity are emboldened when joined to rare artistry.
Click here to download a .pdf of Patrick Bond’s presentation.
Just in time for the Independence Day weekend, the Library of Congress has released new research on the Declaration of Independence. Apparently when Thomas Jefferson was drafting the document he initially used the word “subjects,” then blotted it out and replaced it with the word “citizens.” Library of Congress preservation researcher Dr. Fenella France has used spectral photographic imagery to uncover the original markings. In the popular press, Jefferson’s writing is described as a “Freudian slip” …
As we exit a more contentious than usual month of Gay Pride, Social Text brings you this dossier of critical appreciations of long-standing collective member José Esteban Muñoz’s new book, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Read responses from Lauren Berlant, Barbara Browning, Gayatri Gopinath, and Ricardo Ortiz. Muñoz responds to his responses, and performance art legend Vaginal Davis contributes an original illustration inspired by Cruising Utopia.
As I sat down to write these comments, I found myself thinking of another time and place, over ten years ago, when I initially encountered José Muñoz’s first book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Upon … Continue reading “The Utopian in the Everyday”
For those of you who are concerned about the so-called “Gay Agenda,” have no fear. The agenda is alive and well and its chief strategist is usually located in a bunker in the compound known as Washington Square Village. … Continue reading “Fuller, Vaster, Brighter”
My title plays with as it traces a number of imbedded citations. First it conjoins the titles of the two texts that will concern, and, in their conjunction, provoke, me here . One echoes the title of José Esteban Muñoz’s … Continue reading “"Good as Yesterday"'s Queer Futurity: Muñoz with Muñoze”
Let’s think about the “then and there” in the subtitle of Cruising Utopia: the Then and There of Queer Futurity, for these deictics are insistently aligned with the now-central question of how to induce utopian futures from within a negating present. The answer of course is that the aesthetic provides the affective ballast and concrete means to induce exuberant futures.
These responses to Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity situate the project in extremely valuable and useful ways. These readers are all ideal for me: thus indicating my sense of ideality as incalculable and expansive. In each … Continue reading “Response”
Social Text collective member Lisa Duggan is among the speakers at this conference to be held 24-26 June, 2010 at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. Desiring Just Economies / Just Economies of Desire, according to it’s organizers, will “explore how desire not only sustains current economies, but also carries the potential for inciting new forms of understanding and doing economy.” Read the full conference statement and get more details here.
When Siphiwe Tshabalala scored for Bafana Bafana against Mexico on June 11, he provided the World Cup the sublime opening note longed for by his country, and by followers of football across the planet. Mexico’s late equalizer dampened the local … Continue reading “Bafana Bafana: The Reckoning”
In November of 2007 the workers building Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium staged a wildcat strike, demanding monthly project bonuses and better Health and Safety standards. Their action helped inspire a wave of such work stoppages at stadium sites throughout the country, and contributed to one of the abiding narrative themes of the World Cup’s lead-up: would the infrastructure be ready in time?
Fifteen years after the new South Africa’s first democratic elections, the dream of a true, non-racial, economically just “Rainbow Nation” endures. But so too do the inequalities of race and class that are the legacy of apartheid and its colonialist antecedents. In April of 2009 Jacob Zuma, anointed restorer of the liberationist mantle, rode a wave of populist energy to the national presidency. His ascension, however, has not quelled a resurgence of social unrest. For the majority of South Africans who retain faith in the nation’s potential, but mourn the violent inequities that continue to shape daily life in apartheid’s aftermath, the World Cup is cause for a difficult if needed national reckoning. [Part 3 of a 3 Part series.]
