b2o: boundary 2 online

Author: boundary2

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

June 7, 2013
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.

May 26, 2013
The Thinking of the Arab Revolution: Humanity, الإنسانية

New essays from Mohamed-Salah Omri and Miriam Cooke follow up on Omri’s first paper and continue the work of The Tunisian Dossier, these two interested in the “re-packaging and marketing of a ‘moderate’ Islamist leader” and the building of the Qatari empire. We invite you to read and comment on these materials and to place your comments on this topic here and elsewhere on the site.

May 22, 2013
Mohamed-Salah Omri's original essay on the Tunisian Revolution

“The most famous slogan chanted in Tunisia in January, then in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, is a reincarnation of opening lines of the poem “The Will of Life,” written in 1933 by the Tunisian poet Abou el-Kasem Chebbi (1909–1934), which now form the closing part of Tunisia’s national anthem and have been sung by some of the most influential Arab stars, written on protest banners, and shouted by students in the face of French and English occupiers and their own governments.” Continue reading, boundary 2 volume 39, number 1

May 20, 2013
Miriam Cooke writes on Imperial Qatar

Continuing The Tunisian Dossier edited by R. A. Judy and extending the work of al-Insāniya: Thinking Revolutionaries, b2 a series of extended posts focused on what has been called the “Arab Spring,” Miriam Cooke writes on Qatar. Read her article, “The New Empire,” here.

May 17, 2013
des mémoires de la traite, de l’esclavage et de leurs abolitions

Our friends in France–please try to be there, especially to hear Tony Bogues on The Collective Memory of Slavery in the US . . . .

May 14, 2013
Stathis Gourgouris on "The Idolatry Post-Secularism"

Follow Stathis’ careful examination of “Idolatry, Prohibition, Unrepresentability,” here, for free download from the Duke UP site and from the last issue of boundary 2, Antinomies of the Postsecular.

This is a meditation on the assertion by Cornelius Castoriadis that “every religion is idolatry.” Idolatry here is configured beyond the conventional understanding of the idol as a concrete object of worship which works within the logic of representation. In monotheism, even the unrepresentable—or, perhaps, especially the unrepresentable—is an idol, an object of worship that is otherwise silenced by a language that claims to worship a nonobject. In this sense, the prohibition of images in monotheism (Bildverbot) is a highly sophisticated mode of idolatry.

May 9, 2013
Paul Bové's Top Issues of boundary 2

Duke UP has its annual sale of books and journals. Great deals on some of b2‘s best and most popular issues .

May 1, 2013
b2 at Columbia University, "Humanities and a Borderless World" May 19 2013

April 26, 2013
some bounders on Harold Bloom

On the 40th anniversary of Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence, Dan O’Hara organized a one day meeting to discuss the merits and place of the book and Bloom’s theory. Here is link to the audio recording of the days events. Speakers included Dan O’Hara, Jonathan Arac, Susan Balée, and Paul Bové with lots of discussion.

April 11, 2013