The article interrogates the concept of Multitude in capitalist society and challenges the simple notion of social exclusion as an operative force in contemporary social formations and their spatial dispositions. The Shadow will be offered as a spatial and psychosocial relational horizon of differentiation systemically inscribed into the social…[Read more]

Discussing the concept of cultural trauma and its role in popular television dramas such as 24 (FOX 2001-10, 2014-), Battlestar Galactica (Syfy 2004-9), Rubicon (AMC 2010) and Person of Interest (CBS 2011-16), this paper sets out to identify three distinct clusters that are part of what Newcomb and Hirsch once termed a “cultural forum”—a discu…[Read more]

In this article, I will be focusing specifically on cryopreservation and two of the American biotechnomedical tenets introduced by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John in their technocratic model of medicine: the “body as machine” and “death as defeat.” These axioms are embraced by both the biotechnomedical establishment as well as the cryopre…[Read more]

This chapter discusses the inaugural dissertation of the first ex officio professor of natural law in Denmark, Andreas Hojer: the 1735 Dissertatio iuris publici universalis de eo quod iure belli licet in minores. In doing so it seeks to shed light on a little known figure in the early Danish enlightenment, albeit one who was very influential in…[Read more]

On the untenable and unaccountable legality of this definition, and the dangers it poses to free speech, minority rights, and democratic legitimacy. Summarizes some points in “Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2018) but with additional ref…[Read more]

This is an Accepted Manuscript, for an article forthcoming in Antiquity (2019), and remains subject to pre-publication type-editing and proofing. Please cite as James M. Harland, ‘Memories of Migration? So-called “Anglo-Saxon” Burial Costume of the 5th Century AD,’ Antiquity 93 (2019). A link to the final publication at Cambridge University Press…[Read more]

Cities of InfraRed is an abstract for my proposed contribution to a book that is being put together by Cornelia Sollfrank, Shuhsa Niederberger and Felix Stalder. The book has the working title of Aesthetics of the Commons, and arises out of the Creating Commons research project at the Zurich University of the Arts.

A version of Cities of…[Read more]

Among the most persuasive arguments against hate speech bans was made by Ronald Dworkin, who warned of the threat to political legitimacy posed by laws that deny those subject to them adequate opportunity for dissent. In his influential defence of hate speech bans, Jeremy Waldron addresses these objections. Dworkin’s concern with political l…[Read more]

Public racist stereotypes after the election of Barack Obama

On the photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the visual politics of power

On pacifist and patriotic visual imagery and the tenth anniversary of the First World War in Weimar German

On the work of Krzysztof Wodiczko

On looking at lynching photographs

The politics of Rivera’s RCA mural in New York City.

One of the most pressing challenges in the world today is access to clean water. This chapter explores the crises of contaminated water in Flint, water shutoffs in Detroit, and larger questions about the control of water by private corporations and the changing nature of urbanization. As neoliberal policies seek to privatize infrastructure and…[Read more]

Two-part interview about the book Beautiful Terrible Ruins

By depicting urban decay and ecological crisis, ruin imagery shows the people and places that capitalism left behind.

Why are academic and policy discourses on child soldiers relatively silent on sexual violence against boys in armed groups? Drawing from the experiences of boys forcibly conscripted into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this Chapter seeks to transcend the gendered language of sexual slavery, concubines, forced pregnancy and rape. Most sexual a…[Read more]

Is it worst to be killed by a crazed mob wielding machetes or to die via conveyor belt and filing system? The Better Angels of Our Nature keeps falling victim to the halo effect, creating an aura around reason itself. The question, then, is whether the book should be viewed as a jewel in reason’s crown or as among its costume jewellery.