Postcolonial Politics

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Iain Chambers

Iain Chambers

Black Soil Poems: Wangechi Mutu at the Borghese Gallery

Black Soil Poems: Wangechi Mutu at the Borghese Gallery

In the heat of July in Rome, we discussed the exhibition ‘Black Soil Poems’ (brilliantly curated by Cloé Perrone) by Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu at the Galleria Borghese. A certain dissonance was inevitable in the conversation with the writer and journalist Igiaba Scego and Andrea Viliani, director of the Museum

Gaza and the banality... of the West

Gaza and the banality... of the West

I cannot speak for and on behalf of Palestine. But I can try to say a few words in light of the atrocious ongoing massacre in the eastern Mediterranean. Do you condemn Hamas? No, otherwise, I have to condemn the FLN in Algeria, the Vietcong, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the Cuban

What is the ‘black’ in the ‘Black Mediterranean’?

What is the ‘black’ in the ‘Black Mediterranean’?

Bodies cast into the sea, left to die. This time, not by unscrupulous sea captains but by European legislation. Moving back and forward between the slave trade of yesterday’s Atlantic and those expelled and cast overboard in today’s global order certainly encourages us to interrupt and crease our

Ethical Exhaustion

Ethical Exhaustion

The time of politics presents itself as flat and chronological: a response to the immediacies of events. It operates within the calculus of existing powers, their distribution and geopolitical reach. History is frequently reduced to the accumulation of common sense and structural contradictions to crisis management. The new Labour government