The Turn to Diaspora

This essay argues that diaspora must be understood as a condition of subjectivity and not as an object of analysis. I propose an understanding of diaspora as first and foremost a subjective condition marked by the contingencies of long histories of displacements and genealogies of dispossession. In focusing on the problem of subjectivity and subject formation, I am suggesting that diasporas are not just there. They are not simply collections of people, communities of scattered individuals bound by some shared history, race or religion. Rather, they emerge in relation to power, in the turn to and away from power. Diasporic subjects emerge in turning, turning back upon those markers of the self—homeland, memory, loss—even as they turn on or away from them.

PRÉAMBULE 21.22 | 6 : Châu Kim Sanh (Équivoc’) - BLEU NÉON

Dans un Vietnam lointain et fictionnel, se croisent des échos de musique pop sur cassettes et de rap vietnamien actuel. Châu Kim Sanh y traverse des états de corps générés par la présence de néons colorés. 

The Turn to Diaspora

This essay argues that diaspora must be understood as a condition of subjectivity and not as an object of analysis. I propose an understanding of diaspora as first and foremost a subjective condition marked by the contingencies of long histories of displacements and genealogies of dispossession. In focusing on the problem of subjectivity and subject formation, I am suggesting that diasporas are not just there. They are not simply collections of people, communities of scattered individuals bound by some shared history, race or religion. Rather, they emerge in relation to power, in the turn to and away from power. Diasporic subjects emerge in turning, turning back upon those markers of the self—homeland, memory, loss—even as they turn on or away from them.

Towards what justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education

Toward What Justice? brings together compelling ideas from a wide range of intellectual traditions in education to discuss corresponding and sometimes competing definitions of justice. Leading scholars articulate new ideas and challenge entrenched views of what justice means when considered from the perspectives of diverse communities. Their chapters, written boldly and pressing directly into the difficult and even strained questions of justice, reflect on the contingencies and incongruences at work when considering what justice wants and requires. At its heart, Toward What Justice? is a book about justice projects, and the incommensurable investments that social justice projects can make. It is a must-have volume for scholars and students working at the intersection of education and Indigenous studies, critical disability studies, climate change research, queer studies, and more.

Ornamentalism

For a long time now there have been two primary conceptual frameworks through which many of us conceptualize racial embodiment: Frantz Fanon’s “epidermal racial schema”1 and Hortense Spillers’s “hieroglyphics of the flesh.”2 The former denaturalizes black skin as the product of a shattering white gaze; the latter has been particularly instructive in training our gaze on the black female body and the ineluctable matter of ungendered, jeopardized flesh. Yet, has the “epidermal racial schema” hardened for us into a thing of untroubled legibility? To what extent have the “hieroglyphics of the flesh” prevented us from seeing an alternative materialism of the body?

A Map to the Door of No Return : Notes to belonging

A Map to the Door of No Return is a timely book that explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. It is an insightful, sensitive and poetic book of discovery. Drawing on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature, Dionne Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond. The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history—the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities. In this exquisitely written and thought-provoking new work, Dionne Brand creates a map of her own art.

Towards Arabfuturism

It is hoped that, by increasing deposits, digital or otherwise, these ideas can contribute to a growing counterculture of thought and action that through time will be found and used in the construction of alternative states of becoming.

On Orientalism

Edward Saïd's book ORIENTALISM has been profoundly influential in a diverse range of disciplines since its publication in 1978. In this engaging (and lavishly illustrated) interview he talks about the context within which the book was conceived, its main themes and how its original thesis relates to the contemporary understanding of "the Orient." Said argues that the Western (especially American) understanding of the Middle East as a place full of villains and terrorists ruled by Islamic fundamentalism produces a deeply distorted image of the diversity and complexity of millions of Arab peoples.

A Phenomenology of Whiteness (suggestion by James Oscar)

“The world too is inherited as a dwelling. Whiteness might be what is ‘here’, as a point from which the world unfolds, which is also the point of inheritance. If whiteness is inherited, then it is also reproduced. Whiteness gets reproduced by being seen as a form of positive residence: as if it were a property of persons, cultures and places. Whiteness becomes, you could even say, ‘like itself’, as a form of family resemblance. It is no accident that race has been understood through familial metaphors in the sense that ‘races’ come to be seen as having ‘shared ancestry’ (Fenton, 2003: 2).”

The language of ballroom culture