“We had our funk. My granddad had his funk. Where's yours?”

—from Cornel West's “Affirmative Action”

 

TRANSITION 68: Table of Contents

 

POSITION____________________

On European Union
Four years after Masastricht, the goal of European union — a single sovereign currency and a league of nations without borders — is increasingly elusive. What will it take to create a United States of Europe? Looking back in the history of the Americas, Scott L. Malcomson suggests racism.

UNDER REVIEW____________________

Giving Us the Business
Is advertising the most treacherous face of the culture industry, or the promise of a better, fuller world? Philip Burnham critiques the critics.

Imagined Cities
If reality is increasingly “virtual”, what are the porspoects for democracy — and the built environment itself? Richard T. Ford considers the fate of the city.

Public Image Limited
The intellectuals are back, more visible than ever — and this time, they're black. But what price publicity? And what about the private intellectuals? Eric Lott thinks about going public.

The Outsiders
What killed the black-Jewish alliance — black antiSemitism, Jewish paternalism, or its own success? Black Nationalist and Professor of Judaic Studies Julius Lester fathoms America's divided soul.

Working-Class Heroes
E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class announced a project to recover the lived experience of laboring people. Does Sebastiao Salgado's Workers mark the end, at the close of the industrial era? Does the “end of work” mean the end of workers? Michael Watts and Iain Boal dissent.

The National Question
Kate Manzo reflects on culture and nation in the making of the New South Africa.

In and Out of Africa
Jan Vansina and V.Y. Mudumbe have been transforming the idea of Africa, and African history, since the 1960s. Now both have published memoirs. Wyatt MacGaffey considers their two Africas, in myth and memory.

The Autobiographical Turn
Not long ago, literary academics were proclaiming the death of the author. Now the children of deconstruction are writing their life stories. What happened? Michael Gorra investigates the new academic autobiography.

CONVERSATIONS____________________

Of This Time, Of That Place
Novelist Caryl Phillips talks with critic Jenny Sharpe about staying put, going home, and dying in England.

Chicago Hope
William Julius Wilson, the scholar who invented the “underclass”, returns on the subject of crime, character, and the culture of poverty, in conversation with Eric Bryant Rhodes.

Affirmative Action
Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. rap about heroes and villains, talent and tradition, and the troubled state of black masculinity.

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