When we look in the mirror—regardless of our gender or color, the documents in our pocket or shoved in a sock drawer, the beloved in our bed or the absence beside us—do we see ourselves? Or do we see a reflection of the “other,” some version of what we imagine others see?
National belonging is in many ways a fiction. Belonging always happens locally, between specific people in specific places.
Ja, vi elsker / Yes, We Love Read More »
What started as an annual means of escaping winter may have morphed into a permanent escape from racist America.
Beyond Life in the United States: An Essay for My Mother Read More »
Members of a collective celebrate their diverse histories with dramatic flair, finding liberation and joy on the runway and in performances.
Sharing Complexities in Heritage and Belonging Read More »
Maybe leisure – play, rest, daydreaming – is the most radical resistance against repressive forces. In this article, Afghan women writers living under Taliban rule or as refugees reflect on their in-between times, where life is lived.
The Audacity of Rest Read More »
At the core of the ontological and political shifts brought about by the emergence of artificial intelligence, the body becomes a crucial site of conflict and tension over which meanings, identity, and agency are negotiated in the age of machine intelligence. This struggle is not only a technical dispute over accuracy or fairness but also a struggle over what will count as knowledge itself. Over whether the futures being assembled now will be capable of recognising the histories that their patterns were never designed to see.
Blind Spots: Machine Vision, Phenomenology, and the Politics of Visibility Read More »
In a world where possibilities, if not hope, seem in short supply, can we learn to look at those who have been marginalized, excluded, and often dehumanized and demonized not as the Other but as the Otherwise—not aliens but alternatives for reimagining ourselves and our exhausted institutions and societies?
We Have Seen the Other and She is (or Could Be) Us Read More »
The suffering of ordinary people during the partition of India was not limited to spectacular acts of violence, as displaced minorities, both Hindus and Muslims, were subjected to significant levels of bureaucratic violence.
‘Other’ Partitions of British India: The Perils of Historical Amnesia Read More »
This work is a piece of autofiction. While it draws from lived experience, the characters, events, and circumstances have been altered, condensed, or reimagined to preserve the emotional truth of the narrative rather than document factual events. This essay contains explicit sexual language and terminology specific to LGBTQ+ communities. These elements are presented in the context of the author’s personal reflections on navigating gender, sexuality, intimacy, and identity.
Touch Me Everywhere Softly Read More »
The West celebrates and claims ownership over global foods while ostracizing the migrants it belongs to and ignoring a violent, lingering history of colonial trade that continues to shape worldwide plates, palates, and people.
Migrating Flavours: Owning Food, Othering its History Read More »
A series of vignettes of Dhaka dogs, exploring what dog stories reveal about compassion, violence, ownership, and privilege in urban Bangladesh.
