Showing papers in "Cr-the New Centennial Review in 2003"
TL;DR: One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge as discussed by the authors. And that appearance was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge, if those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared.
Abstract: One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area—European culture since the sixteenth century—one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it.. .. In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the. .. only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance. .. was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge.. .. If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared. .. one can certainly wager that man would be erased.
2,042 citations
TL;DR: In their Age of Total Recall, memory is never lost. Only the art of forgetting as mentioned in this paper, which is the only art that can preserve the cultural project of forgetting in the twenty-first century.
Abstract: Imagine a team of African archaeologists from the future—some silicon, some carbon, some wet, some dry—excavating a site, a museum from their past: a museum whose ruined documents and leaking discs are identifiable as belonging to our present, the early twenty-first century. Sifting patiently through the rubble, our archaeologists from the United States of Africa, the USAF, would be struck by how much Afrodiasporic subjectivity in the twentieth century constituted itself through the cultural project of recovery. In their Age of Total Recall, memory is never lost. Only the art of forgetting. Imagine them reconstructing the conceptual framework of our cultural moment from those fragments. What are the parameters of that moment, the edge of that framework?
318 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the changes vis-a-vis nationality and citizenship in the modern nationstate, and propose a set of tools for reconstructing citizenship analytically.
Abstract: The two foundational subjects for membership in the modern nationstate, the citizen and the alien, are undergoing significant changes in the current moment This becomes particularly evident in certain types of contexts foremost, among which are cities. These can be seen as productive spaces for informal or not-yet-formalized politics and subjects. In this examination of emergent possibilities, I first outline these changes vis-a-vis nationality and citizenship. Second, I dissect notions of national membership in order to create a set of tools for reconstructing citizenship analytically. In the third section, I delineate two key, incipient kinds of repositioned membership: unauthorized yet recognized subjects, and authorized yet unrecognized subjects. Fourth, I situate these repositionings within contemporary currents of citizenship theory. In the final section, I theorize the landscape of the global city as an especially salient site for the repositioning of citizenship in practice. At the scale of the city, and the particular urban space of the global city, there are dynamics that signal the possibilities for a politics of membership that is simultaneously localized and transnational.
81 citations
29 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between globalization and national development is a highly disturbed one as discussed by the authors, as the persistence of commitments to autonomy and sovereignty, most importantly in the realm of the economy, the national obstructs globalization just as globalization erodes the national, at the same time rendering irrelevant
Abstract: globalization: the problem of national development under the regime of globalization. The juxtaposition of the terms globalization and national development points to a deep contradiction in contemporary thinking, or a nostalgic longing for an aspiration that may no longer be relevant, but is powerful enough still to disturb the very forces at work in relegating it to the past. There is a suggestion in arguments for globalization that national development may be achieved through globalization, which in turn would be expected to contribute to further globalization, and so on and so forth into the future, which goes against the tendency of these same arguments to set the global against the national as a negation of the latter. While it may not be a zero-sum relationship, the relationship between globalization and national development is nevertheless a highly disturbed one. Understood as the persistence of commitments to autonomy and sovereignty, most importantly in the realm of the economy, the national obstructs globalization just as globalization erodes the national, at the same time rendering irrelevant
26 citations
TL;DR: The notion of complete or perfect body (OED) has been used to describe a fully self-sufficient and well-balanced entity as discussed by the authors, which is the ideal of a complete and complete body.
Abstract: "complete or perfect body" (OED), a fully self-sufficient and well-balanced entity. Thus, the globe is by definition all-encompassing, and its perfection, wherein its beauty is supposed to lie, makes it difficult to imagine an outside of the globe. How could it be complete if it depended on an outside? Recent political and theoretical discourses on the global and globalization are fascinated with this logic of completeness. Moreover, they are themselves engaged in creating what they try to observe. The narratives put forward understand the global as teleological process, awaiting its fulfillment in the imaginary totality of an all-encompassing globality. This all-inclusive narrative does not leave out anyone or anything. Even that which resists the imperatives of the global has to be integrated into the global whole in order to achieve and maintain its ideal totality. The figure of the global is both more inclusive and more exclusive than "older" models of society: anyone is anywhere, potentially, part of the global it is the dream of a non-antagonistic society come true. The global cannot have any enemies by definition, since even those who oppose the
25 citations
TL;DR: It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is selfevident anymore, not its inner life, its relation to the world, not even its right to exist as mentioned in this paper, and the forfeiture of what could be done spontaneously or unproblematically has not been compensated for by the open infinitude of new possibilities that reflection confronts.
Abstract: It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist. The forfeiture of what could be done spontaneously or unproblematically has not been compensated for by the open infinitude of new possibilities that reflection confronts. In many regards, expansion appears as contraction. The sea of the formerly inconceivable, on which around 1910 revolutionary art movements set out, did not bestow the promised happiness of adventure. Instead, the process that was unleashed consumed the categories in the name of that for which it was undertaken.
24 citations
18 citations
18 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that specialized meetings have been organized around the theme of Latin America and globalization, the Middle East and globalization and Russia and globalization; however, these facts invite a clearer reflection on our subject matter and demand a certain number of observations, such as who's speaking and from which intellectual background, and in order to produce what and communicate a knowledge to whom.
Abstract: OUS and rarely interrogates its two components, "Africa" and "identity." What do they mean and since when, exactly? Moreover, and more importantly, there is always, implicit, another question: Who's speaking, and from which intellectual background, and in order to produce what and communicate a knowledge to whom? Finally, by conceiving, in the title of this intervention, Africa as an autonomous entity that we should bring into contact with globalization, or more exactly by situating it in a logical relationship of conjunction with globalization, could we posit also, at the same level, the possibility of debates on, say, the United States or Europe and globalization? Note, however, that specialized meetings have been organized around the theme of Latin America and globalization, the Middle East and globalization, Russia and globalization. I would like to suggest that in their apparent innocence, these facts invite a clearer reflection on our subject matter and demand a certain number of observations.
15 citations
TL;DR: The historical development of world capitalism was influenced in a most fundamental way by the particularistic forces of racism and nationalism as discussed by the authors, and this could only be true if the social, psychological and cultural origins of racism both anticipated capitalism in time and formed a piece with those events which contributed directly to its organization of production and exchange.
Abstract: The historical development of world capitalism was influenced in a most fundamental way by the particularistic forces of racism and nationalism. This could only be true if the social, psychological and cultural origins of racism and nationalism both anticipated capitalism in time and formed a piece with those events which contributed directly to its organization of production and exchange. —Cedric J. Robinson1
TL;DR: Kelley as discussed by the authors argues that too much of this rapidly expanding literature on the underclass provides less an understanding of the complexity of people's lives and cultures than a bad blaxploitation film or an Ernie Barnes painting.
Abstract: With a discovery of the so called underclass, terms like nihilistic, dysfunctional, and pathological have become the most common adjectives to describe contemporary black culture. . . . Unfortunately, too much of this rapidly expanding literature on the underclass provides less an understanding of the complexity of people’s lives and cultures than a bad blaxploitation film or an Ernie Barnes painting. Many social scientists are not only quick to point to generalize about the black urban poor on the basis of a few “representative” examples, but more often than not, they do not let the natives speak. —Robin D. G. Kelley2
TL;DR: The U.S. declaration of a "war on terrorism" in response to 9/11 confirms my belief in the necessity of psychic transformation, especially after the U. S. imperialist efforts to eliminate any geopolitical influence that would get in the way of its campaign to achieve global dominance demonstrates the failure of military force to attain world peace.
Abstract: confirms my belief in the necessity of psychic transformation, especially after the U.S. declaration of a "war on terrorism" in response to 9/11. The intensification of U.S. imperialist efforts to eliminate any geopolitical influence that would get in the way of its campaign to achieve global dominance demonstrates the failure of military force to attain world peace. If we are to create international relations based on mutual cooperation, then Americans need to move beyond jingoism and self-serving protectionism and embrace a consciousness about global interconnections, between nations, within nations, and between people and the natural environment. The shock of "9/11" represented for so many Americans the bursting of their "national security" bubble, supported by a general ignorance of U.S. foreign policy, as well as providing a rationale for throwing uncritical support behind U.S. military aggression abroad in order to punish those foreign "evil-doers." Moreover, many patriotic Americans turned a blind eye to the way the U.S. government eventually bullied its way into Iraq, in spite of a lack of United Nations (UN) support, in order to further its oil and other economic and
TL;DR: The Virgin Spain (1926) as discussed by the authors is a fictional dialogue between Cervantes and Columbus that, to today s reader, sounds uncannily prophetic and at the same time hopelessly outdated.
Abstract: Waldo Frank, the American cultural critic who visited Spain in the early 1920s and immediately fell in love with the country, ends his Virgin Spain (1926) with a fictional dialogue between Cervantes and Columbus that, to today s reader, sounds uncannily prophetic and at the same time hopelessly outdated. The writer and the discoverer are standing at the Spanish Atlantic shore. Columbus, whose eyesight has weakened, asks Cervantes to look westward across the ocean and tell him what he sees. "I see America," Cervantes says. Looking again more carefully, he exclaims:
TL;DR: The authors explore the radical geographical imaginaries at work in Paradise, especially the spatial revisions the novel makes necessary to practices of freedom, and explore the need for spaces free of racial hierarchy.
Abstract: ’ , novel Paradise (), replaces within the historical record a past that has been excluded from it and raises questions that it has avoided about the exercise of freedom in American cultures. As characters attempt to construct a new world of freedom within North America, Morrison’s history of African American life also participates in the re-examination by late twentiethcentury cultural critics of the spatiality of social meaning. In what follows, I want to explore the radical geographical imaginaries at work in Paradise, especially the spatial revisions the novel makes necessary to practices of freedom. In her essay “Home,” also published in , Morrison discusses the need for spaces “free of racial hierarchy”:
TL;DR: Virilio as discussed by the authors describes a meta-geophysical reality which strictly regulates the tele-continents of a virtual reality that monopolizes the greater part of the economic activity of the nations and, conversely, destroys cultures which are precisely situated in the space of the physics of the globe.
Abstract: Since all presence is presence only at a distance, the tele-presence of the era of the globalization of exchanges could only be established across the widest possible gap. This is a gap which now stretches to the other side of the world, from one edge to the other of present reality. But this is a meta-geophysical reality which strictly regulates the tele-continents of a virtual reality that monopolizes the greater part of the economic activity of the nations and, conversely, destroys cultures which are precisely situated in the space of the physics of the globe. Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb 1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw comparisons of leadership from religion, literature, and politics, as tradition and modernity are juxtaposed in the context of capitalism, globalization, and the struggle for culture and self-determination.
Abstract: pling with in this paper. How do we integrate disciplines to analyze and more fully understand the present dynamic reality in African societies and nations? The supposed modern situation seems almost like the traditional structures in the overlapping of what are presented in academic studies as separate institutions to be studied in different departments. Religion, literature, social studies, economics, and political science all seem interconnected by large contemporary themes of social justice, human rights, the state, democracy, and development. Religious, literary, and political prophets also are engaged in and are affected by the same problems of imperialism: hence my concern with resistance and models of opposition. I find it necessary to broaden the scope of my concern with prophecy and opposition in Africa to cross disciplines and histories. Focusing on the issue of gender, I draw comparisons of leadership from religion, literature, and politics, as tradition and modernity are juxtaposed in the context of capitalism, globalization, and the struggle for culture and self-determination.