Old Bones
Paleontology was surprisingly crucial to the settlement of the American West
An Infantile Disorder
If jobs mean maturity, not everyone gets to grow up
The Odor of Things
The political mood of Sonallah Ibrahim’s That Smell bears little resemblance to the one found in Egypt today. Why translate a 1966 novel of failed revolution now?
How to Talk About the Weather
Eco-critc Ursula Heise on the narratives of climate change and the evolving challenges environmentalism faces in telling its story
Not the One
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem broke with his mentor Alain Badiou in an act of philosophical parricide. But is the father dead?
Enigma Deviations
Codebreaker and pioneering computer scientist Alan turing’s life and death illustrate how spies often feel the need to encrypt their personal lives
Cruise Control
Grindr is an app men can put on their phones to find other men to have sex with. But it automates the work that once made a subversive and politically potent world.
Gay Life Against Marriage
In this way, the gay political project wasn’t just emancipatory or messianic, nor could it be exhausted by a list of demands; from within, it undercut capitalism’s charge that there be no alternative by fucking a different world into being.