New Criticals

"Whereas past generations longed to know if there is an afterlife, today we face a living hauntology in the form of our data presences. We live on not only past death, as the recent Facebook end-of-year debacles have poignantly demonstrated, but we live beyond ourselves in and through black-boxed algorithms and their architectures of capture and deployment. While we might understand this as a form of posthumanism or by using the framework of human/machine relations, I suggest we think of it this way: as a form of “weird” solidarity not only with one another but with the very environments that are being made to be “expressive” (Thrift 2012) along with us."

Karen Gregory in Weird Solidarities

"In other words, #AskHerMore and #OscarsSoWhite are not mutually exclusive social movements. They call attention to the intersectional forms of oppression that continue to marginalize women and people of color, and those whose identities intersect these issues—women of color—experience the most invisibility. Ironically, the Oscar telecast worked overtime to represent people of color, as a steady parade of black celebrities—Lupita Nyong’o, Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kevin Hart, Eddie Murphy, David Oyelowo, Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, Terrence Howard and Oprah Winfrey—presented awards."

Janell Hobson in #AskHerMore and #OscarsSoWhite are Not Separate Issues

"Republication Rep. Aaron Schock from Illinois has been spending taxpayer money on renting private jets, getting massages and taking his staff to sold out concerts, according to The Associated Press. And, get this: AP says it has confirmed all those times he rented a private jet, thanks in part to his Instagram posts."

Mariella Moon in AP: Lawmaker's Instagram Account Proves he's Misusing Taxpayer Money

"The “problem” is that Satin Island is so utterly enjoyable. It’s a perfect kind of book. It has the internal consistency and air-tightness of a good manifesto. Catnip for the liberal arts graduate, the dilettante philosopher, the disgruntled culture worker. It goes down so easy. Is it wrong to criticize a book for being so perfectly itself? If you think this unfair, thenSatin Island really is the perfection of a form, an expertly produced confection. At the same time, that perfection can be terminal."

Charles Thaxton in Adventures in Candyland

"The poem, like many of Hughes’s early lyrics, is both interesting and uninspiring. We admire him for the pre-spoken-word cadences and the energy of the enterprise, but without ever knowing who his “I” is we have no anchor in the poem. The ungrounded first-person voice allows Hughes to be humanity, but not a specific human."

Hilton Als in The Sojourner