Articles written by: Hortense J. Spillers

Darkest Before Dawn?
Convergence / Politics / Vol 3. No. 1

Darkest Before Dawn?

  (for Cheryl Wall)   I’ve known for awhile now that birthdays do not necessarily measure or accord wisdom, and for sure, their passage does not at all secure a body against shock and the harvest of grief and disappointment that seven decades of living in the United States (or […]

Image Credit: Felandus Thames, A Mother, A Daughter, and Mother-in-law. (2018) 24"x 39" x 1", Hairbeads on coated wire. Courtesy of the artist.
Business / Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Apocalypse Now and Then

For the many thousands gone and Cheryl Wall in particular When the editors concocted the thematic for this issue, we’d hoped that “Apocalypse Now and Then” would do more than corner an unmistakable allusion to the title of the 1979 film addressed to the ravages of the Vietnam War and […]

Image Credit: Virgie Ezelle Patton, Three Sisters: Shelly, Jennifer, Julie, (1990s), Oil on Canvas, 44 x 52, Courtesy of the Ezelle-Patton Family Collection
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 1-2

Arts Now

Before we begin, a few things should be said: the A-Line offers itself to public scrutiny as a journal of progressive thought; after publishing four issues of the journal that focus on the enormous political crisis that confronts the United States and its citizens—the veritable inspiration for our creating the […]

Or Else…
Convergence / Politics / Vol. 1 No. 3-4

Or Else…

In the clash of motives that it inscribes, the term “freedman” and the conditions of existence that it signals are poignantly alluded to in the epigraph that Richard White chooses to inaugurate his exhaustive study of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age: “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless […]

Cliff Notes (or Notes for Going Over One)
Convergence / Politics / Vol. 1 No. 2

Cliff Notes (or Notes for Going Over One)

Though it would be hard to say in a single sentence, let me try to understand this: shortly before the holidays, Politico reported that a rogue band of Republican Congressmen had been convening under cover of darkness for several weeks in the shadow of the duly appointed bipartisan House investigative […]

Passport to Freedom
Convergence / International / Politics / Vol. 1 No. 1

Passport to Freedom

The signature page of my passport instructs the bearer—in all caps—to “See p. 27.” Reissued in 2014, my copy of this inestimable document, snugly fit in its leather case, edged at two corners in gold metal, rode my left hip for all of three years, when, one fine day, not […]