Introduction
- Introduction
The articles and reviews that make up this issue interrogate a number of different dimensions of the historical, political and cultural present. Wendy Brown’s important leading article outlines an approach to understanding the nature of the political present that draws upon Foucault’s analysis of neo-liberal government as well as the recent imperial policies of the Bush regime. The erosion of liberal democratic institutions in recent decades renews with particular urgency the problem of elaborating a political morality capable of withstanding the present conjunction of neo-liberal government and imperial world politics. Brown’s analysis renews the terms for debate over the nature of this regime and the conditions of possible resistance to it.
Alan B. Wood takes issue with the prevailing conception of the world as linear temporal order in which future possibilities are determined by the past and present. Wood contrasts this view with Bergson’s conception of the world as an open-ended and ongoing present. By way of a reading of the science fiction film Gattaca, he shows how the Bergsonian conception points towards alternatives to contemporary forms of genetic and sociobiological determinism.
Sara L. Knox examines the complex and contradictory roles of crime and the discourse of transparency in contemporary representations of community. She points to evidence of a desire for transparent community and explores the role played by the televising of crimes and institutions of surveillance such as Megan’s laws in sustaining contemporary forms of government through making-visible.
Cathy B. Glenn’s illustrated essay discusses the performative political practice of the San Francisco-based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Glenn argues that the playful performance art of this group, along with the responses that it elicits, demonstrates the material force of discursive play and the unsustainability of any sharp distinction between cultural and material politics.
Kate Manzo’s review essay discusses On the Postcolony by Achille Mbembe and The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, arguing that these important books are about Western political theory and its relations to Africa as much as they are about African political theory, political economy and postcolonial theory.
Lisa Trahair critically reviews Julia Thomas’s extensive collection of essays on the image, Reading Images, along with Rachel O. Moore’s Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic.
Finally, Andrew Murphie reviews Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television.
Issue 7.2 will be published this fall and will include a tribute to Edward Said. We will consider submissions received in the very near future.
We are planning a feature on Bernard Williams for a future issue. Please contact the editors if you are interested in participating.
