“American conservatives have often embraced freedom movements elsewhere in the world, but never the civil rights movement in America.”

—from Martin Kilson's “Anatomy of Black Conservatism”

 

TRANSITION 59: Table of Contents

 

POSITIONS____________________

Anatomy of Black Conservatism
Are they bad--or just misunderstood? Black conservatives, more vocal than ever, have become liberalism's latest bête noir. Martin L. Kilson sets out to determine the nature of the beast.

Designer Gods
Be a God, or just look like one. David Rieff appraises the new cult of custom-made divinity and takes up the New Age question: just who was created in whose image?

On the Politics of Being Mortal
While ars moriendi—the art of dying—is an old preoccupation in Western culture, Nigeria's leading historian, J. F. Ade Ajayi, suggests that much can be learned from a distinctively African mode of mortality.

Latin America and the End of the Cold War
What happens to the pawns at the chess game's end? Now that Latin America is no longer a battleground for competing Cold War powers, Jorge G. Casteñeda assesses the perils and prospects.

Home is Where the Heart...Lies
As African politicians manipulate the language of “exile” and “homeland” for their own purposes, critic Kenneth Parker defends the literary rights of the uprooted cosmopolitan.

UNDER REVIEW____________________

For a Democracy without Limits
Paris's trendiest intellectuals have finally discovered America. So will they make a mess of liberal pluralism, too? Linsay Waters reports from the intellectual frontlines.

School for Scandal
Can franchise capitalism really transform education? Henry Giroux worries that the business of schooling just means schooling for business.

State of the Union
Peter Erickson appraises June Jordan's bold moves beyond identity politics.

To Live and Die in LA
As the capital of mass culture—and mass uprisings—Los Angeles is both reviled and revered. Rita Williams splits the difference.

Staging South Africa
Loren Kruger examines the politics of performance.

White Mischief
Catherine Clinton on a new study of women, race, and empire.

Our Favorite Slave
Philip Burnham visits the slave shacks behind the national manor.

Dry Season
Geoffrey Wisner tours Doris Lessing's Zimbabwe.

Gothic Naipaul
Joan Dayan takes on the great brown hope of the colonial imagination.

CONVERSATION____________________

Foreign Body
Global theorist Julia Kristeva talks with cultural critic Scott L. Malcomson about nationalism, community, and the limits of pluralism 

Back To Archive