“If you are white, you are a latecomer to the blues and you will always be a latecomer. It cannot be undone.”
—from Sven Birkerts' “Prior Use”
TRANSITION 55: Table of Contents
POSITIONS____________________
“There is Something Wrong in the Paradise”
Under the thumb of an aging despot, Malawi has abetted — and prospered from — the turmoil of its war-torn neighbor, Mozambique. Now Life President E.K. Banda finds that the chickens have come home to roost.William Finnegan
The Camera People
Witness the rites and rituals of a most peculiar tribe, the ethnographic filmmakers. Eliot Weinberger
White Humor
Senghor's favorite anthropologist had a strictly colonial sense of the comic. Johannes Fabian
UNDER REVIEW____________________
What Becomes a Legend Most? Reflections on Romare Bearden
Richard J. Powell ponders Bearden's blues aesthetic.
The Great Migration
Fred Powledge traces the rural exodus that transformed America's cities.
Pluralism and its Discontents
Now that the liberal consensus is under fire from the left as well as the right, Andrew Delbanco has doubts about the prospects for cultural pluralism.
Sisyphus in China
A recent quest for modern China, Arif Dirlik argues, founders on an old question: whose modernity?
What Multiculturalism Means
It isn't just for wimps anymore. Peter Erickson proposes a hardcore curriculum for his fellows on the right-minded Left.
The Limits of Liberalism
Kate Manzo breaks Rian Malan's traitorous heart.
Culture Clash
A recent contretemps about culture and commitment in South Africa gives expat Benita Parry a sense of déjà vu.
Getting Wasted
Andrew Ross explains the unglamorous protest of Suburbia's dead-end kids
Narrating the Nation
Ian Baucom on Homi Bhabha's alien nations.
Xenocide: Antisemitism á la française
Tzvetan Todorov explores the nature of French racism in the shadow of the Holocaust.
IN FOCUS ____________________
Wrong Notes
Kofi Agawu tells how not to write about how not to write about music.
Prior Use
Sven Birkerts ponders orality and priority in African-American writing.
A Pole Apart
William Boyd on Ryszard Kapuscinski's reports from the field.
“The Offal Kind”
When Ayi Kwei Armah wrote about “the offal kind,” was he thinking about his critics? Ode S. Ogede critically assesses a recent critical assessment.
Mystic Sisterhood
Sandra Adell on the art and act of black women's autobiography.
CONVERSATION____________________
The Art of IdentityBlack British artist Sonia Boyce discusses her work with critic Manthia Diawara.