The following review of Akiko Shimizu’s “‘Imported’ Feminism and ‘Indigenous’ Queerness: From Backlash to Transphobic Feminism in Transnational Japanese Context,” an ICCTP-sponsored lecture and seminar held at the University of California, Berkeley, in January 2020, appears in the latest issue of Postmodern Culture. Queer Nations and Trans-lations by Daryl Maude What does it mean to be trans in Japan, or in Japanese? How does it correspond with transness in North America or in English? Terms and identities travel and are translated, existing not in a relationship of one-to-one correspondence, but rather in an association with one another. To be gei or toransujendā in Japanese is not the same …
Read More[ConTactos] Verónica Gago, There Is No Fire Without Air / Sin aire no hay fuego / Sem ar não há fogo
New from [ConTactos] In “There Is No Fire Without Air,” Verónica Gago maps transnational transfeminist struggles across the globe as they come into contact, creating lasting reverberations that not only make visible a shared political memory, but also prepare us to act together despite our current pandemic circumstances. Read the full article here. “There Is No Fire Without Air” is the eleventh installment of [ConTactos], an ongoing series of critical reflections on our pandemic times. [ConTactos] As communities across the world succumb to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are placed in an exasperating bind between our desire to intervene, to do something in the …
Read MoreHemiPress: [ConTactos] — New series/Nueva serie/Nova série
[ConTactos] — New series With the trilingual publication of Vladimir Safatle’s “Welcome to the Suicide State,” translated into English by André Lepecki, HemiPress announces the launch of its new series [ConTactos]. As communities across the world succumb to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are placed in an exasperating bind between our desire to intervene, to do something in the face of the current health / medical / political / economic / cultural / human rights catastrophe, and the seeming impossibility of doing so amidst a global lockdown that forecloses the very modes of contact upon which many of our abilities to intervene rely. …
Read MoreCritical Theory in the Pandemic: Fundraising for European Refugee Aid
Critical Theory in the Pandemic: A Glossary Fundraising for European Refugee Aid How to do critical theory in a pandemic? We cannot present a stable analysis of an unfolding disaster, and yet we cannot remain silent either, given how covid-19 interacts with multiple existing crises and aggravates them. One such catastrophic dimension is the situation on the Greek islands at the European border, where overcrowded refugee camps are threatened by aggressive border police and fascist gangs as well as the outbreak of the virus. As the Frankfurter Arbeitskreis – a network of German philosophers, sociologists, and political theorists connected through …
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