Hillbilly Ethnography
A well-meaning, best-selling memoir promotes dangerous myths about racial determinism and racial innocence that form the bedrock of
PostSecret "Live" Spring 2012
The New Inquiry Magazine, No. 1 contributor, Frank Warren of PostSecret has posted the dates for his live tour. Stop by and say hello if…
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Notes on animals and auteurism: The cat and dog cinema of Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir
Thoughts on a Word: Glamour (Part I)
Glamour is an illusion, and an allusion too. Glamour is a performance, a creation, a recipe, but one with give. Glamour is elegance minus restraint,…
Plié ... Relevé ... Heel!
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely critters--at least as far as Mrs. Midnight's Animal Comedians were concerned.
Selflessness and self-absorption
The space in which we can experience ourselves just being ourselves is disappearing. Here's what an old book about 18th century French painting can tell us about this
Our Contributors' Books
Combined and Uneven Apocalypse - Evan Calder Williams The Reactionary Mind - Corey Robin Girl Parts - John Cusick Roman Letters - Evan Calder…
David Graeber's Debt: My First 5,000 Words
If anything, the limitation of this big book is actually that it’s not big enough, that it gestures towards -- without fully including – so very much that is within the ken of its ambition. But the short version of this review, simply, is this: I can’t really picture a better book than this one
Simulacra Descending a Staircase
In these dark and brooding times it is Kafkaesque tragicomedy that strikes the right note of collective mirth. The Iranian government recently staged an anniversary celebration of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's momentous return from exile in France. The cardboard reenactment of his arrival has been the subject of effusive internet mockery since photos from the state-affiliated
On Modeling as Modern-Day Physiognomy
Just as the face-reading art of physiognomy was a reflection of social and scientific standards instead of an actual science of character, today's “It” girl is as much a reflection of tastemakers’ collective sense as she is an owner of her own talent.
Greetings From the Internet
I just wanted to introduce myself to new-to-me readers here at The New Inquiry. Faithful readers of TNI may know me from the recent comparative…
Sunday Reading
On Sundays, I post a lot of links to things I think are worth reading, almost always from the previous week, and in exactly no…
Facebook division of labor and the rewired society
I'm reading through the summary of findings of this Pew survey of Facebook users. (It is based on phone polling, so caveat emptor.) The point…
Time Comes Around
One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of the Pont des Arts taken by Kertész in 1929. Taken from inside the…
Working Beauty
In the opening scene of Julia Leigh’s debut film Sleeping Beauty, Lucy (Emily Browning), our beautiful college-student protagonist, serves as a medical test subject. She leans her head back as the doctor slowly threads a tube down her throat, then fills a balloon in her chest with air while she holds the tube in place.
Bail Bloc 2.0
Our work on immigration, ICE, borders, and detention
Liquid Border
An excerpt from The Law of the Sea by Annalisa Camilli
United States v. Scott Daniel Warren
The criminalization of humanitarian aid at the border enacts a fantasy of desolate individuation. Scott Warren’s felony trial reiterates the necessity to keep reaching out.
Abolish the ICE Prison Complex
A recent Supreme Court decision reminds us that the law has no interest in lifting the veil that covers immigration prisons
Border Theories
What would it look like to put a power structure on trial? Interweaving visual narratives of the Mexico–United States border show the uneasy relation between objects and people.
Soft Borders
The soft patriotic trust in Canada's softly administered border is fully compatible with the logic of restriction.
Fash at Sea
The end of Defend Europe’s fascistic campaign to block migrants’ boats in the Mediterranean doesn’t mean the threat is over
Operation Streamline
The border’s dream is for undocumented immigrants to be its most reliable missionaries. But the immigrant who crosses the border is the affirmation of a life that transcends it.
In the Water
An immigrant in the water is a story or a lesson, but an immigrant on land is our responsibility--they might become our neighbor
Cross-Border Operations
It is no longer plausible to describe the state’s borders as geographically fixed or the state as distinguishable from capital or “markets.”
Empire Records
Guantánamo Diary's missing passages connect it with the US empire's deeper history of far-flung capture and detention networks