Convergence

Image Credit: Sheena Rose, Grawlix, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Horseman No. 5

Something that hasn’t been adequately discussed about Marx’s Capital is the extent to which Marx is fascinated by capitalism’s mechanisms, precisely because the system is demented, yet works very well at the same time. —Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “A Very Special Delirium”1 The current pandemic arrogates to itself the […]

Image Credit: Romare Bearden, Morning of the Rooster. (1980), Lithograph, ART©Romare Bearden Foundation. Courtesy of the Romare Bearden Foundation.
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Dawn of Darkness 1

I know, I know, It threatens the common gestures of human bonding The handshake, The hug The shoulders we give each other to cry on The Neighborliness we take for granted So much that we often beat our breasts Crowing about rugged individualism, Disdaining nature, pissing poison on it even, […]

Image Credit: Duron Jackson, Bone Crusade. (2025). Courtesy of the artist.
Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

The Interlude

Until last week’s uprising, the quarantine had felt like living in an interlude, a present haunted by the potentiality of what seemed to be surely to come. Such interludes comprise the texture of living haunted by the imminent possibility of violence manifesting as confrontation or preventable death. Paraphrasing Zora Neale […]

Image Credit: John Fenton, Jazz Combo, (1965) n.a., etching and aquatint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Donald Vogler, 1980.
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Entertainment / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Frontline Blues and the Post-Rona Truth

There has always been enough blood money, mis-education and mass distraction in these dis-United States to erase any memory of catastrophe or atrocity that brought trauma or ethical contemplation to the surface of the national conversation. Problematic, because acknowledging such scar tissue might direct fealty away from the national religion—materialist […]

Image Credit: Gopal Dagnogo, Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Beast. (2015). Courtesy of the artist.
Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

From Pandemic to Pan-Demos?

For Kamau Brathwaite, in memoriam The word “apocalypse” is commonly equated with a cataclysmic world-ending, heralded by all manner of natural disasters from plagues to earthquakes and tempests, and marked by the violent deaths of multitudes. Yet its original meaning has to do with revelation, a laying bare of those […]

Image Credit: Mrs. Luce Ben Aben Arab School of Embroidery, Alger, Algeria, French colonial postcard, 1910s.
Convergence / International / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Errata in retro-prospect

“Some few mistakes in printing are here remarked; please forgive us for these errors.” This is a common opening sentence for errata notes. Such a loose sheet of paper inserted into a publication is a common way of saying, “We won’t let errors stand.” Although the printed errors cannot be […]

Image Credit: Stock Ticker, (1873), Thomas Alva Edison
Business / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Terminality–the Ticking

In its annual public ritual of announcing how close humanity is to self-destruction, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists convened the press in January 2020 to set the large hand of their iconic Doomsday Clock relative to the small hand which rests at midnight, waiting for the big hand to join […]

Image Credit: Susan Bee, Jacob's Ladder, (2019, 24" x 18", oil and enamel on linen). Courtesy of the artist.
Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Heard Immunity

Sometimes as I wander loose among pangs and pongs of unsolicited remorse, I cast aside the bromides that shield my thoughts from a disease I fear I cannot shake casting stones across the waters of my losses as one drowning imagines shore.

Image Credit: Nicole Peyrafitte, KA Kingston (2019). Courtesy of the artist.
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

from: DIARY NOTES MARCH-MAY 2020

[….] A Shelter Is Not Necessarily An Island as title for something cogent right now comes to mind & brings to mind Eric Mottram’s 1971 book                         Shelter Island & The Remaining World             […]

Image Credit: Nicole Peyrafitte, KA Kingston JaunedOeuf (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Arts & Culture / Convergence / Health / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

eye to the eye of the storm
a selection

unbearable witness i do not want to write these words_ escorted by flashing red and blue lights the long white truck an enormous hearse passes slowly down the street through the neighborhood no where to run or hide from its path the stare of its headlights a mark on each […]

Image Credit: Felandus Thames, Hottentot Marilyn in Blacklight. (2017),  47.75" x 48" x 4", Acrylic, enamel and glitter on canvas over panel. Courtesy of the artist.
Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Mystic Speech in the Time of Catastrophe

Which modes of speaking, writing, and knowing resound more intimately and powerfully in times of catastrophe? From millenarian prophecy to elegy, one might imagine constructing something of a general typology of modes of speech that resonate around sites of the end. In what follows, I want to briefly dwell with […]

Image Credit: Torkwase Dyson, Plantationocene (Black Water 1919). Acrylic, graphite, string, wood, ink on canvas, (2019). Courtesy of the artist.
Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 3

Earth Interregnum

In the fall of 1926, Antonio Gramsci, the Sardinian journalist and agitator who had risen to lead the Italian Communist Party (PCI), was arrested by Mussolini’s Fascist government and charged on the pretext of violating the recently enacted “Exceptional Laws in Defense of the State.” He was sentenced to five […]