-
Built on Sand: Situating Extractive Economies in the Mekong Delta Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2023-12-15 Michaela Büsse
Abstract This essay discusses the author’s experience doing field work in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, and suggests that the messy entanglements between sand mining, real estate development, and local life afford an analysis that is both situated in and attentive to the global economies of sand. Thinking along the ecological, social, economic, and political dimensions of shifting sands not only challenges
-
Fields of Commitment: Research Entanglements beyond Predation Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2023-12-15 Mareike Winchell
Abstract The boundaries of fieldwork not only define the scope of research but also circumscribe and delimit the bounds of responsibility. This essay proposes a return to the whereness of the field as an antidote to treating the powers of description and historical dispersal as absolute and uncontested. Linking classic critiques of social science’s mapping of nature and culture, of the authors and
-
Terrains of Struggle: Grounding the Open Field Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2023-12-15 Fred Carter
Abstract Grounded in the material and historical specificity of the Durham Coalfield, this essay engages two unlikely modes of field theory: the vein of radical poetry associated with the “open field” in the 1970s, and the parallel resurgence of a vernacular Marxism committed to reorienting the critique of capital “from below.” Tracing the intersection of open field poetics and partisan knowledge through
-
Meadowing in Common: Towards a Poethics of Overgrowth Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2023-12-15 Maria Sledmere
Abstract Building on Daniel Eltringham’s notion of the “kinetic commons,” this essay offers “meadowing” as an experiment in putting to creative-critical work the multi-sensory dreamscape of abundance, desire, exposure, and biodiversity signified by meadow. Through close readings of contemporary texts by Verity Spott, Tom Raworth, and Myung Mi Kim, and drawing on Sedgwick’s “reparative reading” and
-
Notes on Contributors: Volume 32, Number 2, January 2022 Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Notes on ContributorsVolume 32, Number 2, January 2022 Anthony Alessandrini teaches English at Kingsborough Community College and Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and the co-editor of “Resistance Everywhere”:
-
Artifact Functionality and the Logic of Trash in Videogames Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Erick Verran
Abstract: This article works out a logic for trash in videogames through its consideration of the ludic artifact. Defining videogame trash as that which graphically outlives the execution of its ludic function, the essay distinguishes trash from objects that signify as real-world refuse, like Mario Kart’s banana peels, and the merely decorative. It also addresses the correlation between technical capability
-
Against Digital Worldlessness: Arendt, Narrative, and the Onto-Politics of Big Data/AI Technologies Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Ewa Płonowska Ziarek
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Against Digital Worldlessness: Arendt, Narrative, and the Onto-Politics of Big Data/AI Technologies Ewa Płonowska Ziarek (bio) “The best way to humanize AI is to tell our stories.” — Elizabeth Adams I. A New Referendum on Reality In a February 2020 article in The Atlantic entitled “The Billion Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect
-
The Decline of Phatic Efficiency Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Matthew J. Rigilano
Abstract: This article assesses phatic communication now, when symbolic efficiency is in decline. As a result of neoliberal capitalism and industrialized social media, small talk is both obligatory and suffused with anxiety. Under disciplinary society, chitchat has been a threat to biopolitical control. Today, small talk is a form of surplus value that enters directly into the market. No longer a ritual
-
Horrible Beauty: Robin Coste Lewis's Black Aesthetic Practice Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Matthew Scully
Abstract: In Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (2015), Robin Coste Lewis deploys “horrible beauty” as a dissensual aesthetic experience that challenges the perceiving subject. To experience horrible beauty, in Lewis’s poetry, is to be called to reflect on and critique the pathologies of whiteness upheld and perpetuated by aesthetic scenes, as well as to reframe what has been rendered either
-
Climates of the Absurd in Chantal Peñalosa and José-Luis Moctezuma's "CCTV" Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Judith Goldman
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Climates of the Absurd in Chantal Peñalosa and José-Luis Moctezuma’s “CCTV” Judith Goldman (bio) Embedded in an unassuming point on the 1,952-mile Mexico-US border, the scene of counter-surveillance that ends “CCTV”—the collaborative video-poem by Mexican multimedia artist Chantal Peñalosa and Xicano poet José-Luis Moctezuma presented
-
Challenging Theater in the Special Period: A review of Bretton White, Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Katherine Ford
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Challenging Theater in the Special PeriodA review of Bretton White, Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba Katherine Ford (bio) White, Bretton. Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba. U of Florida P, 2020. Given the country’s unique history and connections with the United States,
-
Neither Optimism nor Pessimism: A review of David Marriott, Whither Fanon? Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Geo Maher
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Neither Optimism nor PessimismA review of David Marriott, Whither Fanon? Geo Maher (bio) Marriott, David. Whither Fanon? Studies in the Blackness of Being. Stanford UP, 2018. “The time has come”—with these words, penned more than a decade ago, David Marriott opened the original essay that would later serve as keystone and namesake for
-
Notes on Contributors: Volume 32, Number 2, January 2022 Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Notes on ContributorsVolume 32, Number 2, January 2022 Anthony Alessandrini teaches English at Kingsborough Community College and Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and the co-editor of “Resistance Everywhere”:
-
Artifact Functionality and the Logic of Trash in Videogames Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Erick Verran
Abstract: This article works out a logic for trash in videogames through its consideration of the ludic artifact. Defining videogame trash as that which graphically outlives the execution of its ludic function, the essay distinguishes trash from objects that signify as real-world refuse, like Mario Kart’s banana peels, and the merely decorative. It also addresses the correlation between technical capability
-
Against Digital Worldlessness: Arendt, Narrative, and the Onto-Politics of Big Data/AI Technologies Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Ewa Płonowska Ziarek
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Against Digital Worldlessness: Arendt, Narrative, and the Onto-Politics of Big Data/AI Technologies Ewa Płonowska Ziarek (bio) “The best way to humanize AI is to tell our stories.” — Elizabeth Adams I. A New Referendum on Reality In a February 2020 article in The Atlantic entitled “The Billion Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect
-
The Decline of Phatic Efficiency Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Matthew J. Rigilano
Abstract: This article assesses phatic communication now, when symbolic efficiency is in decline. As a result of neoliberal capitalism and industrialized social media, small talk is both obligatory and suffused with anxiety. Under disciplinary society, chitchat has been a threat to biopolitical control. Today, small talk is a form of surplus value that enters directly into the market. No longer a ritual
-
Horrible Beauty: Robin Coste Lewis's Black Aesthetic Practice Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Matthew Scully
Abstract: In Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (2015), Robin Coste Lewis deploys “horrible beauty” as a dissensual aesthetic experience that challenges the perceiving subject. To experience horrible beauty, in Lewis’s poetry, is to be called to reflect on and critique the pathologies of whiteness upheld and perpetuated by aesthetic scenes, as well as to reframe what has been rendered either
-
Climates of the Absurd in Chantal Peñalosa and José-Luis Moctezuma's "CCTV" Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Judith Goldman
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Climates of the Absurd in Chantal Peñalosa and José-Luis Moctezuma’s “CCTV” Judith Goldman (bio) Embedded in an unassuming point on the 1,952-mile Mexico-US border, the scene of counter-surveillance that ends “CCTV”—the collaborative video-poem by Mexican multimedia artist Chantal Peñalosa and Xicano poet José-Luis Moctezuma presented
-
Challenging Theater in the Special Period: A review of Bretton White, Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Katherine Ford
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Challenging Theater in the Special PeriodA review of Bretton White, Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba Katherine Ford (bio) White, Bretton. Staging Discomfort: Performance and Queerness in Contemporary Cuba. U of Florida P, 2020. Given the country’s unique history and connections with the United States,
-
Neither Optimism nor Pessimism: A review of David Marriott, Whither Fanon? Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Geo Maher
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Neither Optimism nor PessimismA review of David Marriott, Whither Fanon? Geo Maher (bio) Marriott, David. Whither Fanon? Studies in the Blackness of Being. Stanford UP, 2018. “The time has come”—with these words, penned more than a decade ago, David Marriott opened the original essay that would later serve as keystone and namesake for
-
Resistance and Biopower: Shame, Cynicism, and Struggle in the Era of Neoliberalism and the Alt-Right Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-24 A. Kiarina Kordela
Abstract: This essay examines the relation between neoliberalism and the alt-right, showing that their shared cynical amoralism elevates irresponsibility to the level of absolute morality, such that the Democrats’ exhortation to shame proves counterproductive. The alt-right’s outrage-inducing effect on the Democrats is due to its double relation to biopower: insofar as biopower governs the society
-
The Impassable Dream Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-24 John Mowitt
Abstract: This essay approaches the theme of “impasse and democracy” through the motif of the American dream, a dream, as many have noted, unfulfilled both at home and abroad. This lack of fulfilment is here read as a structural impasse within democracy, as a sign that democracy dreams, or is a dream, because it cannot come into its own. Building toward a sustained reading of a typically neglected
-
The Impossibility of Multiracial Democracy Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-24 Christopher Chamberlin
Abstract: Democracy becomes modern after it abolishes slavery and assumes its primary feature—race. Paradoxically, political theory cannot formalize a notion of democracy that incorporates the ex-slave or a post-slavery democracy that does not prescribe racial genocide. This essay shows that this paradox is structural, and tracks its transformation from Alexis de Tocqueville’s and Gustave de Beaumont’s
-
Renewing Humanism Against the Anthropocene: Towards a Theory of the Hysterical Sublime Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-24 Matthew Flisfeder
Abstract: This article puts to question performative contradictions in theories developing a resistance to anthropocentrism in the context of rising interest in the Anthropocene narrative and Posthumanist theories seeking to evade human exceptionalism. By developing the aesthetic category of the hysterical sublime—a term first coined by Fredric Jameson in his early writing on postmodernism—this article
-
Prowling Foucault: A review of Lynne Huffer, Foucault's Strange Eros Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-24 Britton Edelen
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Prowling FoucaultA review of Lynne Huffer, Foucault’s Strange Eros Britton Edelen (bio) Huffer, Lynne. Foucault’s Strange Eros. Columbia UP, 2020. Lynne Huffer’s Foucault’s Strange Eros is a translation, but not in the usual sense. This original work translates not a text from one language to another, but a person: Michel Foucault. Huffer
-
Alone We Fall: A review of Jennifer Gaffney, Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-12-24 Shmuel Lederman
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Alone We FallA review of Jennifer Gaffney, Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding Shmuel Lederman (bio) Gaffney, Jennifer. Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding. Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States was met with consternation and often horror at home
-
Notes on Contributors: Volume 31, Number 3, May 2021 Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Notes on ContributorsVolume 31, Number 3, May 2021 Sharon P. Holland is the Townsend Ludington Distinguished Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Raising The Dead: Readings Of Death And (Black) Subjectivity (Duke UP, 2000), and co-author of a collection of trans-Atlantic
-
Alain Badiou's Age of the Poets: The Desacralizing of the Poem Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Alberto Moreiras
Abstract: This essay examines Alain Badiou's claims concerning the historical end of what he calls "the Age of the Poets": a configuration of thought that keeps philosophy sutured to poetry, which can never be the only condition of philosophy but merely one of them. The Age of the Poets stretches from Friedrich Nietzsche to Paul Celan, and Martin Heidegger becomes its major upholder and representative
-
Breakpoints and Black Boxes: Information in Global Supply Chains Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Miriam Posner
Abstract: Supply chain management (SCM) deals with the procurement and assembly of goods, from raw material to the consumer. With the growing prevalence of offshore manufacturing and suppliers' reliance on "just-in-time" inventory management, SCM has become both astoundingly complex and critical to companies' competitiveness. This essay examines how data works in global supply chains, focusing on SAP
-
My Mother's Bones: The Photographic Bodies of Camera Lucida and Halving the Bones Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Chelsea Oei Kern
Abstract: This essay brings together Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida and Ruth Ozeki's documentary Halving the Bones in order to situate the conceit of maternal photography within discourses of social and racial reproduction. Although Barthes's theory of photography neglects race, it prepares the ground for a logic of maternal reproduction through photography that is not realized within Camera Lucida
-
No Country for Old White Men: Living at the Boundary of Blackness: A review of Joshua Bennett, Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Sharon P. Holland
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: No Country for Old White Men: Living at the Boundary of BlacknessA review of Joshua Bennett, Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World Sharon P. Holland (bio) Bennett, Joshua. Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man. Harvard
-
Patterns within Grids: A review of Tom Roach, Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era. SUNY Press, 2021 Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Susanna Paasonen
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Patterns within GridsA review of Tom Roach, Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era. SUNY Press, 2021 Susanna Paasonen (bio) Roach, Tom. Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era. SUNY Press, 2021. What would follow from detaching considerations of hookup apps from simplistic, pessimistic diagnoses of neoliberal commodification
-
Pork to the Future: A review of João Florêncio, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Steven Ruszczycky
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Pork to the FutureA review of João Florêncio, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig Steven Ruszczycky (bio) Florêncio, João. Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig Routledge, 2020. It is difficult to overstate the impact that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has had
-
A Disordered Review of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-11-04 Sean Yeager
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: A Disordered Review of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos Sean Yeager (bio) Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda. The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred. Bold Type Books, 2021. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's new book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
-
Prowling Foucault: A review of Lynne Huffer, Foucault’s Strange Eros Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Britton Edelen
-
The Impossibility of Multiracial Democracy Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Christopher Chamberlin
-
Pork to the Future: A review of João Florêncio, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Steven Ruszczycky
-
Patterns within Grids: A review of Tom Roach, Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era. SUNY Press, 2021 Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Susanna Paasonen
-
-
Alone We Fall: A review of Jennifer Gaffney, Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Shmuel Lederman
-
Resistance and Biopower: Shame, Cynicism, and Struggle in the Era of Neoliberalism and the Alt-Right Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 A. Kiarina Kordela
-
A Disordered Review of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Sean Yeager
-
Alain Badiou's Age of the Poets: The Desacralizing of the Poem Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Alberto Moreiras
-
Renewing Humanism Against the Anthropocene: Towards a Theory of the Hysterical Sublime Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Matthew Flisfeder
-
My Mother's Bones: The Photographic Bodies of Camera Lucida and Halving the Bones Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Chelsea Oei Kern
-
Breakpoints and Black Boxes: Information in Global Supply Chains Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Miriam Posner
-
The Politics of Witchcraft and the Politics of Blood: Reading Sovereignty and Sociality in the Livingstone Museum Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Alírio Karina
Abstract:Thoroughly entangled in the legacies of colonial anthropology, witchcraft is often presented as evidence of primitiveness or superstition, or as a metaphor for reality. This paper examines a set of witchcraft objects held at the Livingstone Museum in Zambia, reading them against anthropological and political-theoretical efforts to treat witchcraft as a metaphor—for the African nation-state
-
Introduction: Unsettle the Struggle, Trouble the Grounds Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 SA Smythe
-
Choreographies of Consent: Clarice Lispector's Epistemology of Ignorance Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Rocío Pichon-Rivière
-
"This book … of traces and tremors, if book it be": A review of Michael Taussig, Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Cory Austin Knudson
-
-
Negative Ecology: Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty at 50 Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 John Culbert
This essay reassesses the significance of Robert Smithson's land art for environmental politics in a time of climate crisis. Drawing on analyses of fossil capital and petrocultures, it argues that Smithson's aesthetics of entropy—particularly as conveyed in the 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty—provide a valuable dialectical methodology for critical theory in the Capitalocene. The essay proposes a "negative
-
Self-Reflexivity as Infra-Structure: A review of Karen Benezra, Dematerialization: Art and Design in Latin America Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Jens Andermann
-
Coming Down: A review of Ricardo Montez, Keith Haring’s Line: Race and the Performance of Desire Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Tyler T. Schmidt
-
Afterword: Across Difference, Toward Freedom Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Keguro Macharia
-
Black is the Color of Solidarity: Art as Resistance in Melanesia Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Joy Enomoto
Abstract:This essay centers on three Melanesian women artist activists who use art as a tool for social justice and as visual archive: Camari Serau and Mere Tuilau both of iTaukei descent living on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji, and Sonja Larson of Papuan Tolai descent living in New Mexico. This essay adds to Black/Indigenous Studies in conveying a more nuanced understanding of Blackness from within
-
Unsettling Diasporas: Blackness and the Specter of Indigeneity Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Sandra Harvey
-
Garifunizando Ambas Américas: Hemispheric Entanglements of Blackness/Indigeneity/AfroLatinidad Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Paul Joseph López Oro
Abstract:Central Americans of African descent are in the margins on the histories of transmigrations and political movements in the isthmus and their diasporas. The absence of Black Central Americans in Latinx Studies and Central American Studies is an epistemological violence inherited from Latin American mestizaje. The insurgence of Afro-Latinx Studies is an intellectual and political response to
-
The Grounds of Encounter: Racial and Colonial Discourses of Place Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Sarah E.K. Fong
Abstract:Bridging Black and Native Studies, this essay juxtaposes the speeches of late-nineteenth century social reformers with Black and Indigenous place-making practices to show that white settler spatial imaginaries depict both Black and Indigenous peoples as placeless within the lands currently called the United States. Moving beyond an analytical separation of Black and Native Studies, it employs
-
Radical Friends: Botany and Us: A review of Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari, Radical Botany: Plants and Speculative Fiction Postmodern Culture Pub Date : 2020-01-01 Erin Obodiac