Periscope articles and content
One consequence of the Enlightenment is that human beings have become a subject of scientific scrutiny. Another consequence is that the sciences are regarded as hierarchically arranged. Officially, the hierarchy is mereological. We move from the tiny particles of physics, up to … Continue reading “Locating the Moral Brain”
In 2009, a team of psychotherapists sent by a humanitarian aid organization rushed to Honduras to treat survivors traumatized by the geopolitical crisis of a military coup and the resulting violence (Jarero, et al 2010). The targets of their war … Continue reading “Should We Be Triggered? NeuroGovernance in the Future/(Tense)”
For those who prefer history chopped up into neat slices, John McCain’s modest concession speech on the lawn of the Arizona Biltmore on November 5, 2008, seemed like a clean cut of the knife. With the economy in a nosedive, it was not just the end of a presidential campaign. The neoliberal era seemed to be over–its reigning troika of deregulation, marketization, and privatization cast into disgrace, along with its most recent fiscal vehicles such as debt leveraging and speculation in finance and land. Nowhere was the devastation more visible than in McCain’s hometown. Phoenix had flown highest in the race to profit from the housing bubble, and it had fallen the furthest. Footage of the metro region’s outer-ring subdivisions reclaimed by sage grass, tumbleweed, and geckos was as evocative of the bubble’s savage aftermath as photographs of the Dust Bowl’s windblown soil had been of the Great Depression.
Andrew Ross has done it again. He’s researched something new, and written it up elegantly. In this case, the topic is sustainability, in that most right-wing of cities, Phoenix (Arizona). Ross weaves in a complex set of stories and voices, … Continue reading “Bird on Fire: Response”
I confess: I drive “a Prius, eat organic and support wilderness preservation.” I am under no illusion, however, that doing these things makes my lifestyle sustainable. There is much more to achieving sustainability goals personally and, more significantly, sustainability … Continue reading “A City like the Desert”
Phoenicians starved for their city’s self image will find critical satisfaction in Andrew Ross’s Bird on Fire. As a Phoenix resident for nearly 20 years, I know all too well how we have long been deprived of the kind … Continue reading “That Which Is Not Inferno, Or, The Pleasure of the Urban Text”
On one side of town, there would be ecological ‘haves,’ enjoying access to healthy, morally upstanding green products and services. On the other side of town, ecological ‘have-nots’ would be languishing in the smoke, fumes, toxic chemicals, and illnesses … Continue reading “The Future is Now: Climate Change and Environmental Justice”
An excerpt from Andrew Ross’s Bird on Fire talk, delivered at the CUNY Grad Center on October 28, 2011. Untitled from Social Text on Vimeo.
In our dystopian present, the term speculation is associated with an epistemology of greed, a sanctioned terrorism, and a new dimension of imperialism no longer based in production but in abstract futures. But speculation means something else for those who refuse to give its logic over to power and profit.
“What will you do when the apocalypse comes??” he asked me urgently. My first reaction was to laugh derisively. But a friend made me think twice. “Who knows, maybe he’s right,” she said. Then came the Tsunami that devastated South Asia in 2004. And the levees that breached during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Who’s to say what’s real?
The afrofuturist dystopic visions of Octavia Butler and Janelle Monáe tip on the tightrope of critical disability studies through the possibilities and limitations they reveal for post-human bodies. In Butler’s speculative fiction, disabled characters are gifted with transhuman abilities … Continue reading “Vampires and Cyborgs: Transhuman Ability and Ableism in the work of Octavia Butler and Janelle Monáe”
Science fictions never present the future, only “a significant distortion of the present,” as Delany wrote in 1984. But they also distort the present of anyone reading at any time, even the text’s own future. The contours of Dhalgren’s disintegrating city belong to the wake of 1960s countercultures and social movements, to a sexual and racial moment whose history uninformed new generations of readers will learn as they read, even if they fail to recognize it. Sexual pleasure in Delany’s work links the past and present and lets a different future feel possible, even when it takes place within structuring limitations.
Chinese-Canadian author Larissa Lai imaginatively interrogates the boundaries of the human, alchemizes myths of origin, and embraces the impurity of the cyborg while foregrounding the politics of racialization, animality, and sexuality. Lai builds on the rich tradition of women … Continue reading “Larissa Lai's "New Cultural Politics of Intimacy": Animal. Asian. Cyborg.”
China Miéville is the recipient of multiple awards for his speculative/science/weird fiction novels, and the only author ever to win three Arthur C. Clarke Awards. His most recent novel, Embassytown, came out in May 2011 and has received enthusiastic reviews. As well … Continue reading “Socialist Irrealism: an interview with China Miéville”
The short film accompanying musician and designer M.I.A.’s (Maya Arulpragasam, who is British of Sri Lankan Tamil descent) song “Born Free” was released in April of 2010 and immediately banned from YouTube. Arulpragasam is no stranger to controversy, since … Continue reading “Race for Life”
