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Ayiti Kraze / Haiti in Fragments

Ayiti Kraze / Haiti in Fragments
For some, Haiti is the “poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere,” a “failed state,” long on the brink of collapse. For others, Haiti is a beacon of freedom, evidence of the only successful slave revolt in modern history. This forum brings together scholars from different fields of study, and different parts of the world, for a conversation about ways to think about challenges that Haiti has faced since independence, challenges that have been international in scope since this sovereign nation’s sudden and unexpected debut on the world’s stage. Thus besides considering Haiti’s vexed political history and pressing social problems, we are concerned with the way prevailing forms of diplomatic recognition and patterns of international exchange have served to worsen, rather than improve, social institutions and their capacity to serve the people of Haiti.

The title of this forum — Ayiti kraze — stems from a Kreyol expression that often surfaces in moments when political institutions splinter apart (as when Jean-Bertrand Arisitide was ousted in 1991 during a coup d’état). But, the idea of Haiti in fragments also suits this effort to piece together critical insights concerning this tragic predicament. The catastrophic events of January 12, 2010 have already transformed the way many researchers relate to their work. Scholars who typically take years to develop articles and books have organized symposia and published essays in a matter of days – this forum is but one example. We hope this critical practice will endure long after Haiti is re-built. -- Michael Ralph, editor

Contributors:

Sibylle Fischer; Laurent Dubois; Ferentz Lafargue; Michael Dash; Greg Beckett; Alex Dupuy; Karen Richman; Meg Satterthwaite; Millery Polyné; and Gina Ulysse.

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After Copenhagen

After Copenhagen
Climate change is on every politician's lips, and every marketer is "going green." But is significant action in the cards? Periscope begins a series of articles that think beyond the impasse of Copenhagen.
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Social Networking in Iran

Social Networking in Iran
Facebook updates, Twitter "tweets", cellphone camera photos and video and SMS instant messages were ubiquitous in the media coverage of this summer's post-presidential election crisis in Iran. But is the medium ever the message? Inaugurating our new regular online-only feature Social Text invited pieces from scholars of Iran, new media, and visual culture, and asked them to think through the contradictory promise of technology. Annabelle Sreberny places new technologies in the context of prior political uses of small media in Iran. Hamid Dabashi explores the sociological and religious resonances of "social networking," proposing that it was not Facebook that saved the Iranian civil rights movement, but the movement that saved Facebook. Nicholas Mirzoeff reads the politics of the circulation and archivization of death as spectacle on the internet. And Elijah Saxon closes with a cautionary note about the enthusiastic embrace of technologies built for surveillance more than social activism.

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Periscope in Retrospect

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