“The demonic vow of the twentieth century seems to come from Virgil: “If I cannot move heaven, I will stir up hell.”

—from Nadine Gordimer's “Our Century”

 

TRANSITION 71: Table of Contents

 

POSITIONS____________________

Our Century
Hiroshima, Sharpeville, Sarajevo, Dachau . . . Gandhi, Stalin, Einstein, Mandela. Can we sum up a century? Nadine Gordimer reflects on the end of the millennium.

West of Eden
The Mourides are black Muslims—diligent, well-organized, and increasingly successful entrepreneurs working, in their own words, “toward the conquest of America.” These Senegalese immigrants may be the heralds of a robust African business class. Scott L. Malcomson investigates the Mouride ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

Mike's Brilliant Career
Fresh out of jail, and sporting a new suit, new politics, and a new religion, Mike Tyson aspires to the pantheon of black masculine heroes. But even wrapping himself in the mantle of his icons may not be enough to put paid to his ghetto insecurities. Gerald Early unpuzzles the riddle of black cool.

The Jews of South Africa
On arriving in South Africa, European Jews discovered they were no longer the ultimate evil. A population unused to the luxury of choice found themselves confronted with a stark one: make a separate peace with the architects of apartheid, or become apostates to whiteness. Peter Beinartdescribes the dynamics of nation and belonging.

UNDER REVIEW____________________

The Social Body
In the era of cultural studies, “the body” has taken center stage, generating scores of books on everything from labile cyborgs to the signifying fanny. What's at stake in the new corporeal criticism? Richard Sennett gets physical.

Playing the Field
What do anthropologists do to the people they study? Sometimes, they sleep with them. Susan Seizer ungirdles the sweetest taboo.

Ways and Means
From Selma to Soweto, black freedom struggles in the U.S. and South Africa shared personalities and programs, as well as ambitions. Lewis Nkosi reviews the politics of comparison.

Husbands and Wives
When is a man not a man? A bride not a woman? A priest not a transvestite? Wyatt MacGaffey plumbs the vagaries of gender in West Africa.

The Poverty of Poverty
Welfare was so vulnerable to radical “reform” in part because of the impoverished terms used by left and right to discuss inequality. Nicholas Lemann reconsiders the language of privation.

CONVERSATIONS____________________

The Angle We're Joined At
Out of a history of violence, displacements, segregation, and dreams deferred, Maxine Hong Kingston envisions a fiction in which “no one gets hurt”—and anybody can become Chinese. Michele Janette talks with her about love, writing, and appropriation.

Irreconcilable Differences
When The Colonizer and the Colonized was published in 1957, it energized the independence movements in North Africa and made its author, Albert Memmi, one of the most celebrated voices for decolonization. Forty years later, critic Gary Wilder talks with Memmi about postcolonial identities in postimperial France.

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