“The whole turn-the-other-cheek business isn't getting anywhere in black America. That's why people aren't walking around with a K on their hat.”

— Spike Lee in “Generation X”

 

TRANSITION 56: Table of Contents

 

POSITIONS____________________

Turning the Page: African Writers on the Threshold of the 21st Century
Who will write, who will read, and under what conditions? As a continent of creativity struggles against the odds, Nadine Gordimer contends that African literature will make history...or it will be history.

Post-Colonial Culture, Post-Imperial Criticism
W.J.T. Mitchell considers the paradoxical relations between first world criticism and third world literature in an age after empire.

UNDER REVIEW____________________

Malcolm's Myth Making
Novelist David Bradley learned about myth, iconography, and the three-act structure when Warner Brothers hired him to turn Malcolm's story into a screenplay. Now that a controversial new biography has taken on the received account, Bradley reappraises the life, lore, and legacy.

Martin & Malcolm
Were the two converging in their attitudes toward racial justice in America? Michael Eric Dyson ponders the parallels.

Bad Company
The contemporary jeremiad against multiculturalism, Stanley Fish charges, hides its unwholesome ancestry.

Democracy and Dualism
U.S. Appellate Court Judge Richard A. Posner considers a bold new theory of constitutional interpretation...a dangerous mistake.

The Dialectics of Race and Citizenship
The conceptual history of race and status in this country, Stephen L. Carter argues, may shed light on the contemporary politics of racial resentment.

Is God Neutral?
The new wave of Third world theology wants religion to unleash an emancipatory social agenda. V.Y. Mudimbe cites chapter and verse.

Moctezuma's Revenge
The unique position of Hispanics in the United States, Ilan Stavans finds, cannot be reduced to the rudimentary logic of assimilation versus separatism.

The Last Temptation of Columbus
As the quincentennial rages on, Philip Burnham takes a measured look at a heated controversy.

CONVERSATIONS____________________

The Future is Another Country
Novelist Nadine Gordimer talks with Stephen Clingman about life after the Nobel Prize—and, prospectively, culture after apartheid.

Hiphoprisy
Erstwhile enfant terrible Ishmael Reed and up-and-coming rap artist Michael Franti discuss race, representation, and hiphop hypocrisy.

The Race is On
Julianne Malveaux spars with Shelby Steele on all their favorite issues.

Generation X
Spike Lee talks to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about Malcolm and movie making

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