darkmatter Journal

The central question of Escape Routes sounds quite simple: ‘How does social transformation begin?’ But the answer that the book provides is provocative and contests many dominant explanations of social change: according to the authors it is not the brimming revolutionary events occupying the imagination of the left that capture the mechanics of social transformation but the seemingly ‘insignificant occurrences of people’s daily actions’.

What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire?^[1]

The Thugs were bored. Episode 7 [Season 5] failed to move them.
“Too slow,” griped Shine
“They’re making us wait,” said Orlando.
“See, that’s when this stuff gets unreal.

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A materialist turn in the humanities and social sciences has revitalized work in feminism, science and technology studies, critical social theory and phenomenology. Nonetheless, we want to ask what’s at stake when ‘race’ is grasped from a materialist standpoint? Is…

This contribution is a reflection, conversation and debate between two people struggling to understand their own prejudices and interrogate the meaning of anti-racist politics. Acknowledging our own positions of privilege, we see ourselves as embodying whiteness: Dinesh as an Indian…

1. A Goan village

let’s see. when we came in there was a huge number of brits and some rich indians and a few backpackers, still very few tranceheads. so it wasn’t entirely sure whether it would get to

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The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few metres; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and

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Social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced and encompasses their interrelationships… – Henri Lefebvre

2016: Archive Project is an artistic investigation into the inner city Sydney suburb…

Issues of materiality and their relation to racist practices continue to represent a key issue of concern for any theorisation of the ongoing operations of racial categories. In my own work I continue to be challenged to find ways to…

technology corridor, southern California^[1]

 
technoparks, surround me. equipped with a notebook, tape recorder and the questions of an ethnographer of science, i arrive.

a man white, moustache, casual dress, waits for me outside of the bathroom.…

In this article I want to think not about the materiality of race, but about the material dimensions of race theory. In particular, I want to consider as material the relationship between race theory and an anti-racist politics in contemporary…

To pose the question of the materiality of race is also, if one is inclined to trace the genealogy and circumstance of this problematic, to pose the question of multiculturalism’s ‘failure’. This is understood – and there are more or…

Embodied Experience of Race and Gender in Precarious Work

Murat Kurnaz, born in Bremen but holder of a Turkish passport, is a well-known figure in Germany, due no doubt, at least in part, to his voluminous beard. A racializing interpretation…

According to Henri Bergson, memory is an accumulation of time to introduce the possibility of an intentional selection. We can expand or compress certain fragments of input-time at will. By forming intervals memory brings the past into the present,…

There are black people who believe that they treat us that way because we are black. That is not to understand history at all. The persecution of subordinate minorities or weak majorities is a commonplace of history, and you have

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I have this fantasy in the middle of today’s excessive biophilic natureculture: I invent the bio-scissors. With the bio-scissors you can remodel parts of your body without damaging them. DIY beauty: The results are instant, the healing process is immediate…