Periscope articles and content
On Friday, November 10th, the recently formed NYU Faculty for Justice in Palestine held a teach-in on campus on the theme of Palestine and the University. I share my remarks from that evening here. My name is Lou Cornum. I am … Continue reading “Palestine and the Project of Native Studies”
The following is a humble presentation I shared as a recording to the event A Faculty Teach-In: Palestine, Cease Fire Now! Settler Colonialism, Palestinian Liberation, and Solidarity, held on November 7, 2023 at the Arab American Cultural Center at University … Continue reading “A Dispatch from Ramallah in the Time of Genocide”
This lightly edited speech was written for the November 4 Free Palestine: National Day of Action in Montreal that was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement. I am standing here in solidarity with the Palestinian peoples who are today demanding … Continue reading “No Human Animals: On Black Solidarity with Palestine and the Defense of Life”
Palestine Now Edited by Maya Mikdashi, Jasbir Puar, Helga Tawil-Souri Palestine Now editors invite contributions reflecting upon current and historical conditions in and of Palestine and Israel. As we collectively confront the “ethical indifference with which racial violence is met” … Continue reading “Palestine Now–Call for Essays”
A Wavering Wager “Modern India” has always been a gambit. Not because modernity in this part of the world remains hobbled by obdurate traditions, as some would have it, but because such a project has to navigate logistical as well … Continue reading “Introduction: National Life in the Wake of the Pandemic”
“How dare you?” These are almost the last words my friend Surekha said to me, in a text message. I had LOL’d. She said, “I’ll see you soon dude.” She had just moved to Bombay, from Delhi. That was on … Continue reading “How Dare You?”
When the coronavirus pandemic hit India around March 2020, it began a great urban unravelling. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in characteristic style, imposed a draconian nation-wide lockdown at four hours’ notice on the evening of March 24th. With the announcement, … Continue reading “The Coronavirus and the Great Indian Unravelling”
One of the indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic across the world was the sudden emergence of clean air. The India Gate photographs featuring air sans pollution was a reminder of its ferocious twin—air transformed by industrial metabolism, heavy with … Continue reading “In Search of Om: Speculations on India’s Epidemic Intensities”
Signal and Noise, or the Balcony Scene 5 p.m. on March 22, 2020. The clamor starts near the end of a one-day “Janata Curfew” (People’s Curfew) declared across India by the central government a few days prior to what would … Continue reading “Superimposition: App-Based Contact Tracing in the Indian Pandemic and Its Unexpected Intimacies”
Civil solidarity, a necessary precondition for democratic systems, remains a governing mode for political formations seeking a hegemonic position within democracies. Civil solidarity is marked by claims to an inclusive, normative-universal idea of “we-ness.” As cultural sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander … Continue reading “Covid and Civil Solidarity”
Image: Leela Venugopal, We All Wait for the Rain Drip, drip, drip. This is life now. The eerie stillness. The bottomless sorrow. The paralyzing numbness. The quiet acceptance. Time stills, life slows. This is how it is playing out. … Continue reading “The Memory Keepers”
With every superstorm, flood, drought, or heatwave, the uneven effects of climate change are made clear. Coastal communities in the poorer nations are displaced from their homelands while wealthy nations move to tighten border restrictions. Private fire services are hired to … Continue reading “Red Natural History: An Introduction”
Nitawahsin was a large empire or nation-state of the Amskapi Piikani and their sister-states, located almost near the center of North America. Its borders were the Saskatchewan River to the north, Yellowstone River to the south, the Rocky Mountains to … Continue reading “The Slow Violence of Natural History”
Indigenous is a misnomer. We are family members, clans, nations, and relatives. We know each other by relation to one another. We have stories about ourselves and the animals and the creatures that no longer live on the planet. This … Continue reading “Dinosaurs, Eugenics, and Collapse: Indigenous Erasure in Natural History”
In his essay “Of Cannibals” (1580), Michel de Montaigne wrote of the recently discovered inhabitants of the so-called New World, “the laws of nature govern them still […] it is a nation wherein there is no manner of traffic, no knowledge … Continue reading “Cooperative Nature”
