(Thinking with James Ferguson’s Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution ) In our present world, it is often taken for granted that one must work to deserve to live. This moral command is one of the foundational beliefs of modern society, repeated so often that it comes to us…
This essay explores Alexander Weheliye’s concept of sonic Afro-modernity as a challenge to linear histories of modernity. Through close engagement with W. E. B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison, it argues that sound reorganizes time, history, and Black subjectivity, revealing forms of modern life that exceed written archives and demand new practices of listening.
Is there such a thing as public bitterness? What do we call resentment aimed at public authorities or leaders? In recent months, I have witnessed a particularly corrosive form of bitterness among those we label “public intellectuals”— scholars, journalists, analysts, activists, and preachers. Their outrage takes many forms, always breathing fire and predicting doom for…
I I linger in the hush of water’s echo, my voice still a ripple in the air. You exit, swift, as if I too evaporate the light in your hands extinguishes me to an absence. II What does it mean to un-see or un-hear a being, to harvest silence from a living presence? The corridor…
