The Bureaucracy of Us
Even when members of a family know what their bond means to them, they have no idea what it means to the state.
Face Me, I Face You
Queen Elizabeth I went global by pioneering the slave trade
Scream Queens
What do we hear when a woman screams for the camera?
Yasssss, Kween!
An interview with Jarvis Derrell, the man behind @shehashadit on Instagram
Weird Corporate Twitter
Just as corporations have become “persons” in law, they have also become “persons” on social media? Why do we find this funny?
Boy 2 Man
Richard Linklater's new movie Boyhood is a formal accomplishment and a narrative hazard
Coming to Las Vegas
In Chris Abani's new novel The Secret History of Las Vegas, universality is in the particular and nothing stays where it's supposed to
Two Tears for Suboxone
Why is the addiction-recovery world so adamantly against a pill that helps users kick heroin?
No Man’s Land
Lying outside either state’s claims to sovereignty, the border zone both challenges and defines the legal conception of the state.
The Will to Wall
What is the work that walls do in a world of staggering inequality?
Vapor Eyes
E-cigarettes are social consumption, not private vice. They keep us addicted not so much to nicotine as to each other
The Anxieties of Big Data
What does the lived reality of big data feel like?
Dreaming of NAFTA
Tejano star Selena represented the cultural promise of a more open U.S. Mexico border. Her death presaged the ultimate fate of that dream.
Antiporn Land
Antiporn activists target the medium rather than the economic structures that make it profitable
Lonely Unknown
Did David Chase Explain the Ending of the Sopranos?
Christian Marclay Goes to Bollywood
The artist’s supercut of Indian films’ use of Switzerland is a whitewash