Because we continue to learn from the combined histories, practices, and imaginaries of feminism, black studies, Marxism, and anti-colonialism, we know there is untold power in the ordinary. As the late scholar of the world-making capacities of the masses C. L. R. James said not long before he died, “You never know when it is going to explode. The revolutionary movement is a series of explosions when the regular routine of things reaches a pitch where it cannot go on.”
Our November contributors know that the regular routine of things is reaching a pitch where it cannot go on.
Subscribe now to read their work on UBI as sustenance for late capitalism, back pain, the feel-good commuter story, labor organizing and workers’ rights, what the child was, the making of hit video games, lessons for antifa from the 1970s, the image maintenance of normative American journalism, organizing poets, Vladimir Nabovok’s nocturnal labors, animal workers, and focus groups – plus, a special project that lets you disrupt your way to dystopia on your daily commute.
“We’re living in a time when major cultural producers are increasingly taking note of the creativity of their fanbases. They’re making ‘ships’ canon, ‘revealing’ Dumbledore’s homosexuality, or calling Daenerys ‘Dany’ in vulgar fits of fan service. But no matter how much capitalists co-opt fan fiction, it’s the fans who find much more in their work than they ever intended.”
Theodor Adorno, the Devengers, why Sallie Mae can burn in hell, the Superman we actually want, Zelda, an eerily familiar media corporation in an eerily familiar lower-Manhattan tower, Coldplay at the self-checkout, Nate Silver’s obsessive empiricism, Silicon-Sweet Valley, Xenogears, and a political Dream Daddy choose-your-own-adventure.
“Lacking a racialized land border that the nativist imaginary can cohere around — and at which egregious examples of state repression and neglect take place — Canadians are able to take pride in an immigration system based on a meritocratic points system and internationally praised refugee resettlement efforts. Exporting border violence — both by its own agents and in collaboration with other enforcement regimes — outside of Canada allows the managed order of its immigration system to be read as organically produced, and all immigrants as the recipients of Canadian fairness and benevolence.”
“Oscillations between the right to kill and the right to maim are hardly haphazard or arbitrary. The purportedly humanitarian practice of sparing death by shooting to maim has its biopolitical stakes not through the right to life, or even letting live, but rather through the logic of ‘will not let die.’ Both are part of the deliberate debilitation of a population — whether through the sovereign right to kill or its covert attendant, the right to maim — and are key elements in the racializing biopolitical logic of security. Both are mobilized to make power visible on the body. Slated for death or slated for debilitation — both are forms of the racialization of individuals and populations that liberal (disability) rights frameworks, advocating for social accommodation, access, acceptance, pride, and empowerment, are unable to account for, much less disrupt.”
THE NEW INQUIRY Vol. 63: Patriots
AS summer wanes, we find the globe seized by multiplying superstorms. In the ever growing man-made catastrophe of climate change, these crises unfold along strictly drawn borders. Hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, and landslides lay bare the calculus of care as it is divvied up along national lines.
In the Gulf of Mexico, concern is portioned out according to metaphorical proximity to the United States of America. Politicians offer prayers for U.S. colonial properties, the most they can spare for the black and brown people who call the islands home. And yet, even within continental borders, additional borders further divide the deserving and the left-for-dead. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina transformed the very black city of New Orleans into a death trap. Black residents who fled their homes for nearby southern states were marked as “refugees,” a title given to those for whom the nation reluctantly makes space. Today, in 2017, the administration seeks to eliminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, in an affirmation of what people of color have always known: Patriots are born, not made.
Our September contributors know that nothing so tightly congeals who counts as a person as the word “patriot.”
Subscribe now to read their work on Wonder Woman, nationalist rhetoric on the occasion of disaster, Canadian borders, life as a drone operator, the marking of environmental activists as mercenaries and terrorists, neoliberal dogs, a nonnationalist literary culture built by queer Russian poets, stars and stripes, intercommunalism, fascists at sea, the role and future of universities, the liberal economy of injury, and the corporatastic tech future. Plus! A special project that offers you the unadulterated hits of U.S. political dysfunction.
PRO ANTI
“Antifa is indeed a set of self-defense tactics. The circumstance of self-defense does not require permission from those who permit the attack with a wink or through bluster. But anti-fascism is also a real movement to abolish the slavery that persists at the base of capital, including those concrete foundations on which statues to slave-ownership were built.”
“I've been mom-poet from 13 when I bled and dreamed the same night I was the Virgin Mary.”
New Inquiry editor Tiana Reid recently held a not-entirely-real conversation with poet Montana Ray over mezcal. Montana is a scholar, poet, and translator, and the author of (guns & butter), which was published by Argos Books in 2015. She’s also a mom.
“If we can no longer trust the language for apology as it is used to reify State power, white supremacy, and other oppressive forces in the public sphere, if we are in a situation in which the words ‘apologize’ and ‘sorry’ are issued in the service of power instead of repair, we can start to imagine new actions for admitting and amending wrongs that open up new spaces of being with one another, apologies that don’t happen in the moment of a carefully worded statement but in living mindfully with others, in the daily work of behaving responsibly toward those with whom we share the earth.”
“Every election is a referendum on a particular historical moment.
For all the time we spend discussing the individuals we choose between, elections are also the moment when a society pauses to check in on their values.
Right now in Kenya, the upcoming election, on August 8th, is a referendum on the relationship between justice and peace. Should we pursue peace regardless of the injustices that may be wrought by looking the other way? Or is the relentless pursuit of justice the only way to secure peace?”
Reblogged
Dear TNI Contributors,
Our October issue theme is FAN FICTION.
For our October issue, we are *not* seeking essays, interviews or reviews. Instead, we’re looking for your fan fiction. You should feel free to fictionalize not just genres, but corporations, publications, tv shows, and other media. Parody, speculative criticism, and satire also welcome. You would need to be able to turn in a draft by 8/28.
Send story ideas, teasers, or full fictions to submissions@thenewinquiry.com with the subject line “FAN FICTION” by 8/7. We will respond to accepted pitches after that date. If you don’t hear from us by 8/15, you should feel free to take your fan fiction elsewhere. If you have any questions about whether something might be a good fit, ask us at submissions@thenewinquiry.com.
Thank you, and we look forward to reading your work, TNI
Deadline TOMORROW! Submit your fanfic!
"Hidden cautions flow through the various poses Asian Americans and Muslim Americans strike in public, from television appearances to hashtag campaigns to less tangible representational campaigns ... The debate about how to present ourselves—what to accept from self-purported allies and what to reject—is omnipresent, at times deafening, and often paralyzing."