Coverage of The University of Cape Town’s “Africa Theorises” has arrived – a conversation between our esteemed colleague Anthony Bogues and the renowned scholar Achille Mbembe. Topics include the “redrawing of the global intellectual map,” the “flight from theory” and “scientism,” the waning hegemony of the “Western Archive,” the possibilities of “liberty,” and the “modes of being human.”
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"Gamification and Other Forms of Play"
Patrick Jagoda examines the formative role of new-age “gaming” within contemporary economic, social and cultural life. Read the full article here.
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Barack Obama Vs. the Tea Party — "States of Fantasy," by Don Pease
From the 2012 Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies, Don Pease’s new provocative essay analyzes the recent populist conservatism in terms of the disparate fantasies convoking its disparate constituencies.
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Tony Bogues and Achille Mbembe: Africa Theorises
On August 13th, The University of Capetown hosts a conversation between our esteemed colleague Anthony Bogues and the renowned scholar Achille Mbembe.
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Summer 2013 Issue
In the second issue of its fortieth volume, boundary2 introduces the young scholars of “the future of criticism,” examines the functions, rules and formats of literature and the modern-day moral philosopher, questions the role and development of “world” literature as a form and product of globalization, initiation and resistance, and much more, all while earning professional next-level experience points across the board. Read our featured essay, Gamification and Other Forms of Play by Patrick Jagoda, and subscribe now for full access to all the journal’s offerings. Preview the Summer 2013 issue here.
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‘Reflections on the Radical Caribbean Intellectual: from Toussaint L’Ouverture to Walter Rodney’
Toussaint L’Ouverture 
Walter Rodney For all our friends in London, NYC, and Western Europe on 19 June, a chance to hear Barrymore Anthony Bogues, an heir to this tradition, discuss the emergence of a new type of intellectual with consequences and influences around the world. University College London (UCL) sponsors this lecture.
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Don Pease — "Futures of American Studies"
The world-famous course of lectures and seminars begins again this summer. Here is the Institute’s Schedule. Don Pease, the Institute’s director, will be delivering his lecture, “Between the Camp and the Commons.”
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Sadia Abbas — The Echo Chamber of Freedom
This essay argues that notions of the subject, individualism, freedom, agency, change, and history (in other words, the ideas that are used to mark the boundaries of the West, and that generate the most sensitized aporias of modernity) have come to cluster around the figure of the Muslim woman (for whom the metonym is increasingly the veil): object of imperial rescue, justification for imperial warfare, Orientalist cipher, target of jihadist violence, and increasingly the discursive site upon which is worked out the central preoccupation of our time: How do you free yourself from freedom?
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Arif Dirlik's classic essay on 'diversity in China'
Children in Guangdong, China “I take up in what follows the general theme of the dimensions of diversity in Chinese society; more specifically, how to analyze difference in that society located in the southeastern corner of the Eurasian continent, which long has spilled over the boundaries suggested by that location. I find it difficult to think of the dimensions of Chinese diversity before I can settle in my mind questions pertaining to diversity, culture, and, above all, China. What I undertake here is a reflection on the relationship between these terms.”
—boundary 2 2008 Volume 35, Number 1: Read here
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The Dead End of Political Theology
This Spring, Jason Stevens works out the alliance in America between postsecularism, the revaluation of illiberal religion, and the role of Carl Schmitt in defining American power and politics in The Cul-de-Sac of Schmittian Political Theology: The Case of Paul Kahn’s Analysis of American Power.
