The Dictatorship of the Present

Time, to the black American, has always been a burden. From 1619 to now, we have played out our drama before a reluctant time. We were either too late or too early. No people… Read More

On January 17, 2018, the French government announced it was canceling plans to build an airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes. For fifty years, the project had occasioned fervent protest in France as well as… Read More

Anna Burns’s novel Milkman recounts car bombs, suicides, poisonings, guns-in-chests, piles of dead dogs and decapitated cats, but Burns’s main preoccupation is with the slippery violence of euphemism. Our narrator’s community is so muted, so… Read More

This article is in part a response to Agnes Callard’s column, “Persuade or Be Persuaded,” which discussed the recent labor action at the University of Chicago, in which hundreds of graduate students withheld their… Read More