Zadie Smith ~ Swing Time I keep coming back to Barthes’ assertion that what power imposes in the first place is a rhythm (of life, thought, discourse, time). In this book, Zadie Smith explores this idea but gives it a spin: Black people had a place and a rhythm—the TA slave trade robbed black people of them. And of course… Read More
Charles Hirschkind ~ The Feeling of History: Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia An important argument is that the aesthetic world of the Andalusi tradition “suffuses and conjoins the past and the present,” and that this becomes especially acute through an exploration of the sensorial aspects of this tradition. This means: music, affect, and the “fondo sonoro” Andalucismo as a challenge to European ontology Andalucistas are concerned… Read More
José Esteban Muñoz ~ Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts In the introductory notes to “Queer Acts,” Jose Esteban Munoz gives a glance of how ephemera can act as a form of archive, while pointing at the question of under what value-making system would such a notion—the ephemeral—become a form of evidence. The spirit is very much one of anti-rigor. I would guess that in… Read More