ON CUDDLING: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace
Plus a new podcast series, events in Scotland and Bulgaria, new writing on games and conspiracies
Hi! Before the announcements, a note of love to all of you who, like me, are trying to stand with Palestine for humanity and justice against genocide and settler colonial and imperialism in these utterly horrific times. Solidarity! When we say free Palestine, we speak also of our own collective liberation. See you in the streets!
On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace
I am truly overjoyed to announce the publication of the fifth short book in the VAGABONDS series I edit for Pluto Press: Phanuel Antwi’s On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace.
Ranging from the terrifying embrace of the slave ship's hold to the racist encoding of 'cuddly' toys, On Cuddling is a unique combination of essay and poetry that contends with the way racial violence is enacted through intimacy.
Informed by Black feminist and queer poetics, Phanuel Antwi focuses his lens on the suffering of Black people at the hands of state violence and racial capitalism. As radical movements grow to advance Black liberation, so too must our ways of understanding how racial capitalism embraces us all. Antwi turns to cuddling, an act we imagine as devoid of violence, and explores it as a tense transfer point of power.
Through archival documents and multiple genres of writing, it becomes clear that the racial violence of the state and economy has always been about the (mis)management of intimacies, and we should face it with resistance and solidarity.
Buy the book from Pluto Press (50% off for a limited time, with worldwide distribution!)
Join the Berlin launch on Tuesday, November 14 at Savvy Contemporary
Join the London launch on Friday, November 17 at Black Tower Projects
Stay tuned for future launch events!
I’m quite overcome by this book. Suffice to say, when Phanuel (my dear friend for several decades) told me about the idea several years ago it was part of what inspired the VAGABONDS project: a venue to publish cutting-edge work that blends beautiful, provocative writing with radical political urgency and conceptual daring.
On Cuddling is a moving, sumptuous, haunting, vivid, seductive, transformative book that, in spite of the grim and infuriating matters at its heart, filled me with hope and courage. I hope you will find it likewise.
Endorsements
'A necessary book about holding, being held and the hold(s) of the past. Playful, vulnerable, ever acute - Antwi gets down with the funk of language, history, and bodies to make fugitive sense of modernity as anti-Black grammar and embrace.'
- Nadine Attewell, scholar of intimacy, empire, and diasporic life
'Antwi invites us to look more closely at the associations between the cuddle, the choke, the hold and the coffle for Black people. But, beyond the violence of the racial embrace, he also finds a place for fugitive cuddling, the comfort that arcs back and forth between those who flee, those who escape and even those who remain held back. This book will take its place among others by Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and Hazel Carby that have investigated the violence of intimacy and the intimacy of violence.'
- Jack Halberstam, author of 'Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire'
'An urgent and elegant text ... excavating the many meanings of cuddling under racial capitalism. Antwi's writing is lyrical and powerful; the way he harnesses epistemology and polysemy to build both dancing prose and crucial political analysis, is revelatory.'
- Sophie K Rosa, author of 'Radical Intimacy'
The radical imagination, 10 years on - a podcast mini-series.
Ten years ago, Alex Khansnabish and I were putting the finishing touches on a book that would, in 2014, but published by the venerable Zed Books as The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity.
As we approached the decade mark, Alex and I were pleased to collaborate with Cited Media and their flagship podcast, Darts and Letters, to produce a set of pieces to reflect backwards and forwards on the radical imagination. We were supported by the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada.
We can begin with this 1h extended interview Gordon Katic of Darts and Letters conducted with Alex and I reflecting on The Radical Imagination a decade on, with particular attention to if we can say the reactionary right also exhibits some kind of “radical imagination.” That interview is hosted by the New Books Network.
Alex and I also supported Gordon and his team to produce a three-episode mini-series of Darts and Letters on the radical imagination now.
The first episode focused on the crisis of masculinity and the success of the far right in recruiting disaffected young men. It featured Annie Kelly of the podcast QAnon Anonymous and its mini-series MANCLAN; streaming sensation VAush, and journalism professor Nicholas Lemann.
The second episode focused on the strange story of how the conspiracist right appropriated anti-corporate rhetoric from the radical left. This episode featured interviews with author and activist Raj Patel; filmmaker and law professor Joel Bakan, director of The Corporation and its recent sequel; and several Swiss organizers against the World Economic Forum.
The final episode explores anti-authoritarian, autonomist and anarchist perspectives in a moment when we are increasingly told only the state can solve our problems. It features conversations with Elif Genc about the influence of anarchist thinker Murray Bookchin’s ideas on the Kurdish feminist struggle; with documentary filmmaker Marc Appolonio about mutual aid struggles accross Turtle Island; and with Alex and I on The Radical Imagination.
And there is even more content, including extended interviews with various guests, on the Darts and Letters YouTube page.
Upcoming talks in Scotland and Bulgaria
I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak on a range of topics in Dundee and Sofia and at the American University of Bulgaria.
Dundee, Scotland November 22 “The player and the played: Power and resistance in gamified capitalism” - location and details TBA
Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, November 27, AUBG Distinguished Lecture Series “Capitalism and the Radical Imagination” - details
New writing: “Why play games with conspiracies? A reflection on the board game CLUE-ANON”
The journal ephemera will publish a note I wrote about CLUE-ANON, a game I designed as part of the Conspiracy Games and Countergames project I pursued with Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and A. T. Kingsmith. You can read “Why play games with conspiracies? A reflection on the board game CLUE-ANON” here. Next year, the journal will also publish a print-at-home version of the game.