The Funambulist

23/01/2025

There are environments in which the harsh asymmetry of combat between the colonial army and the liberation forces is attenuated, as if these same environments were a part of the colonized people itself. The Night provides such an environment, conducive to clandestineness and surprise guerrilla attacks. Daho Djerbal talks about this relationship between anti-colonial movements and the Night, in the context of the first months of the Algerian War of National Liberation, which began on the first night of November 1954.

(Translated from French by Léopold Lambert)

Read more in our current issue "The Night" (January–February 2025).

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT There are environments in which the harsh asymmetry of combat between the colonial army and the liberation forces is attenuated, as if these same environments…

21/01/2025

Haiti’s nocturnal imaginary is a particularly rich one. On August 14, 1791 in Bois-Caïman, it was during the night that numerous enslaved people held a ceremony that initiated the Haitian Revolution. But this imaginary goes beyond the political history of the country and encompasses a multitude of rituals, myths, creatures, and ghosts. As such, we are happy to feature the artwork of Shneider Léon Hilaire that fully revolves around this dimension of the Haitian collective imaginary.

(Translated from French by Léopold Lambert)

Read more in our current issue "The Night" (January–February 2025).

ARTWORK AND TEXT BY SHNEIDER LÉON HILAIRE TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT Haiti’s nocturnal imaginary is a particularly rich one. On August 14, 1791 in Bois-Caïman, it was during the night…

20/01/2025

The Night is not experienced the same way in different parts of the world. As we get closer from the poles, the Night is less lived in a daily rhythm and more so in a seasonal one, alternating between periods of ‘daylessness’ and ‘nightlessness.’ In this personal text, Krista Ulujuk Zawadski shares with us the ways through which children and adults live through the long winter night (its constellations, its northern lights, its mythology…) in Inuit country.

Read more in our current issue "The Night" (January–February 2025).

The Night is not experienced the same way in different parts of the world. As we get closer from the poles, the Night is less lived in a daily rhythm and more so in a seasonal one…

14/01/2025

When D. Kauwila Mahi and Léopold met in Dene Country in June 2024, Kauwila looked at The Funambulist’s logo and its constellation of geographies in solidarity and remarked that some of the constellations match some actual ones, while others did not. From this remark came this commission of a text about the relationality of constellations that made itself evident during nighttime, and the various forms of guidance through space and time they provide, in particular in Hawaiian cosmology and political history.

Read more in our current issue "The Night" (January–February 2025).

When D. Kauwila Mahi and Léopold met in Dene Country in June 2024, Kauwila looked at The Funambulist’s logo and its constellation of geographies in solidarity and remarked that some of the…

09/01/2025

One of the ways the South African Apartheid manifested was in the imposition of its time on Indigenous people, in particular the quotidian alternance between day and night lives. In Infrastructures of Freedom: Public Light and Everynight Life on a Southern City’s Margins (2023), Stephanie Briers examines that time of the night and the politics of light during the Apartheid and since 1994. Both a symbol and one of its most implacable enforcement of these politics, the high mast lights hovering forty meters above Cape Town’s Black townships are central to the following conversation.

Read more in our current issue "The Night" (January–February 2025).

A CONVERSATION WITH STEPHANIE BRIERS One of the ways the South African Apartheid manifested was in the imposition of its time on Indigenous people, in particular the quotidian alternance between day…

06/01/2025

We are happy to share with you our new issue "The Night" (January–February 2025)!

This issue contests the idea that the lack of sunlight characterizing the Night, means that we “see” less in darkness than we do in broad daylight. In fact, the refraction of sunlight in the Earth’s atmosphere prevents us from seeing beyond this atmospheric layer, whereas the Night allows for a much broader vision of a multitude of celestial bodies in the Universe. Seeing the night sky decenters us at the scale of individuals, and even at the planetary level—something that the 1971 Attica rebels must have intensely experienced when they dedicated parts of their nights to gaze at the stars from the courtyard of their New York State prison, as described by Orisanmi Burton in "Tip of the Spear."

The Night as a liberatory space-time is a recurring theme throughout this issue. For instance, colonial and imperial forces rely primarily on daylight vision for their surveillance and control of bodies. Consequently, the Night provides conditions that evens out, or even provides advantage to guerrilla movements – in particular those who have a practice of celestial navigation that would otherwise find themselves in a brutal asymmetric warfare.

The cover is an artwork by Shneider Léon Hilaire.

https://thefunambulist.net/shop/57-the-night

Constellations, Curfews, Rituals, Nocturnal Guerrillas, S*x Workers, Flares, Ghosts, and Northern Lights

23/12/2024

The Funambulist’s Constellations (2015-2024). /
Map by Léopold Lambert (2024).

17/12/2024

We are excited to announce that our new issue "The Night" (January–February 2025) is going to be out in three weeks from now!

Until January 06, we offer the possibility to pre-order the print+digital version of our forthcoming issue, which contests the idea that the lack of sunlight characterizing the Night, means that we “see” less in darkness than we do in broad daylight. Across the terrain of the Night, the issue mobilizes constellations, curfews, rituals, nocturnal guerrillas, s*x workers, flares, ghosts, and northern lights.

Cover Artwork: Shneider Léon Hilaire

Pre-order our 57th issue now to receive your print copy at the earliest.

And don't forget that you can also pre-order the francophone and hispanophone versions of this issue!



PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY HERE:

Constellations, Curfews, Rituals, Nocturnal Guerrillas, S*x Workers, Flares, Ghosts, and Northern Lights

12/12/2024

A bulldozer destroys the Israeli heavily militarized wall besieging Gaza during “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” on October 7, 2023.

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"One of the reasons this photo of the bulldozer hit me so much when I first encountered it, was that for once, the spectacle of destruction was not of another Palestinian home. Instead, it was the dismantlement of a key component of the settler colonial architecture in Palestine. Anti-colonial revolutions have shown us in the past that parts of settler colonial infrastructure can be reappropriated, their segregative functions deactivated, and thus serve a liberated people. It is my conviction that many other parts of this infrastructure, on the other hand, cannot be reconfigured to serve anything other than inequality, control, and oppression. What can change is the people who are targeted by these logics, but not its violent function itself. This is where the bulldozer can intervene as a liberatory weapon in dismantling these apparatuses of colonial violence."

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This photograph has been featured in Léopold's introduction to our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

10/12/2024

Tracing the festering abscess of ruination in India. / Cartographic drawing by Shivangi Mariam Raj (2024).

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"The horror of this violence lies in all that cannot be measured, all that evades the meticulous labor of statistics charts. The margin beyond the margin. The violence that follows after the bulldozers leave. Each demolition impacts the Air Quality Index with the rise in the fine and coarse particulate matter, chiefly the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10, thereby pushing marginalized lifeworlds into greater precarity with more pronounced health risks. Clouds of dust and smoke that hang for hours in the skies, loud noises from bulldozers as well as celebrating mobs and crowds, aggravated dust and groundwater pollution, long periods of open dumping of rubble along river beds and low-lying areas, and more severely impacted civic amenities ranging from sewage lines to electricity cables all mean that ghettoization, as experienced on the body and in the streets, is further cemented."

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This cartographic drawing has been featured in the essay by Shivangi Mariam Raj titled, ‘Constructing Muslim Absence: “Bulldozer Justice” in India,’ which is part of our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

09/12/2024

A bulldozer topples the summer vacation home of Ulysses S. Grant, in Long Branch, New Jersey, in 1963. / Jack Boucher, Historic American Buildings Survey.

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"During the war, there was this realization that a group would be necessary to both build and fight. So, they specifically tried to bring in engineers, construction workers, and people with skills in operating heavy equipment, building bases, building airfields, highways in the Pacific especially, and they sometimes imported older, more experienced men into the military than they would have otherwise been doing. Those men joined the Seabees. Over time, they essentially tapped the supply of people who could readily staff this. So the new men who joined those battalions were trained when they became Seabees. This kind of army of construction men contributed to the war effort, but then also, when the war was over, came home and found new construction opportunities at home, in both construction and destruction, having trained in those things during the war."

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This photograph has been featured in the conversation with Francesca Russello Ammon titled, ‘From the Pacific War to Urban Clearance, a Short History of the US Bulldozers,’ which is part of our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

06/12/2024

Rejoicing in front of the Parliament Building, on August 5, 2024. / Courtesy of Munem Wasif.

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"Nine months on, the genocide continues to be livestreamed even though Gaza has been disappeared from news cycles and policy discussions in the United States. Meanwhile in Bangladesh, newspapers and social media continue to carry up to date coverage and Palestinian flags still feature prominently in public protests. Even so, when I returned in July, what stood out was not this contrast but eerie resonances with and echoes of what we’ve come to see on our Instagram feeds and hear from the brave if dwindling tribe of journalists reporting live from Gaza."

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This photograph has been featured in the essay by Dina M. Siddiqi titled, ‘Bangladesh’s Second Independence: A Personal Account,’ which is part of our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

05/12/2024

🥄OPEN ACCESS ALERT:

SIX NEW ISSUES PLACED IN OPEN-ACCESS TODAY!

Since 2015, our podcasts and editorial projects have been at our listeners' and readers' fingertips in the open-access format. And since May 2021, we have scaled up our offerings by making access to our sold-out issues more convenient and inclusive. We began this journey by placing our 27th issue "Learning with Palestine" in open-access.

This experience has been transformative for us and encouraged us to reiterate our commitment to improving access to ideas for all. It has also been an opportunity to reflect over our publishing practice.

We have been touched to learn that many of our readers have also been using the magazine as a pedagogical tool, and we hope that this decision will allow them to utilize it more efficiently.

This is also a moment that allows us to reach out to readers in the southern geographies whose participation in these critical conversations has been limited simply because the cost of the magazine remains too high.

For a magazine that is sustained primarily by subscriptions — more than 73% of our incomes — we are only able to undertake this initiative, despite the potential financial risks involved, thanks to the generous support of our subscribers.

You can read the six new issues placed in open-access here:

Issue 07, "Health Struggles"
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/07-health-struggles

Issue 33, "Spaces of Labor"
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/spaces-of-labor

Issue 43, "Diasporas"
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/diasporas

Issue 44, "The Desert"
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-desert

Issue 49, "Schools of the Revolution"
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/schools-of-the-revolution

Issue 51, "Undocumented International"
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/undocumented-international

02/12/2024

This photo was taken around 3pm on the rooftop of the White Building during the last week before the entire building was demolished. These bamboo beds were used by the people living here to dry their clothes and different kinds of meats such as fish, pork, and beef under this blasting sun. When I was young, I often played football with my neighbors in this space after school. / Still from Last Night I Saw You Smiling by Kavich Neang (2019).

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"I started writing my debut fictional feature film 'White Building' in early 2016 with the hope of shooting this film in the building, but after the government’s announcement in 2017, I had no choice in the matter. Despite this limitation, it pushed me to grab a camera and start with the people living there. While my family and neighbors were packing their belongings, they shared their stories and emotions with me, and finally, we left our home in tears."

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This photograph has been featured in the contribution of text and cinematographic stills by Kavich Neang titled, ‘White Building, Phnom Penh, 1963–2017,’ which is part of our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

28/11/2024

Demolition of the housing towers of Les Minguettes neighborhood in Vénissieux on Jun 9, 1983. / Le Progrès newspaper.

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"The bulldozer thus appears to be a means that is regularly used against working-class and foreign populations perceived as undesirable by the authorities, but also against spaces that contribute to the emergence of forms of autonomy, whether cultural or political, even if these are de facto segregated spaces."

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This photograph has been featured in the essay by Hajer Ben Boubaker titled, ‘The Bulldozer Politics Against Immigrant Autonomy in France,’ which is part of our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

26/11/2024

The Bulldozer is the checkpoint. Across the street, a recycler looks away while his cart lies by the caterpillar. / Photo by Alvaro Julio Londoño.

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"Bulldozed populations of El Calvario and Água Espraiada illustrate the afterlife of colonial city governance. Colonial Cali and São Paulo were important centers from where colonizers launched devastating campaigns against the Indigenous population to secure territorial expansion and capital production. Cali, known as “headquarters of the conquest,” was built over the lands of the Timbas, Jamundıes, and Lilıes peoples to become the center of a sugar-cane based plantation economy that would remain, in the post-independence, the main destiny to freed slaves and those who fought Simón Bolivar’s war of independence with promise of freedom. São Paulo, on its end, was the capital of bandeirantism, the mercenary campaigns of terror to conquer Indigenous land in the hinterland of colonial Brazil. Bandeirantes would also be a central force in the plantation project, with the capture of Black enslaved people and decimation of their quilombo territories."

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This photograph has been featured in the essay by Jaime Amparo Alves and Stella Zagatto Paterniani titled, ‘In the Wake of Bulldozers: Speculations on Space, Race, and Insurgent Life in Two Latin American Cities,’ which is part of our latest issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

25/11/2024

In this text by Gladys Tzul Tzul, we interrogate how Mesoamerican colonial borders are crossing Indigenous peoples, in particular the many Mayan communities who live on both sides of the Guatemalan-Mexican border, but also on the northern side of the United States militarized border wall. Through her words, we can see how C**j, Akateko, Q’anjobal, and many other Indigenous peoples have learned to maintain kinship and some shared aspects of their identities despite the violence of these colonial lines.

Read more in our current issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

In this text by Gladys Tzul Tzul, we interrogate how Mesoamerican colonial borders are crossing Indigenous peoples, in particular the many Mayan communities who live on both sides of the Guatemalan…

22/11/2024

For this first trilingual issue of the magazine, we were interested in translating into English and French, the terminology of the feminist struggle in Latin America, and more specifically in Uruguay. In this text, Victoria Furtado describes the last ten years of the movement, its methods, its ambitions, its victories, but also the way language and allegories (in particular with regards to water) deploy a poetic and powerful imaginary of liberation.

(Translated from Spanish by Valentina Sarmiento Cruz, María Vignau Loria, and Felipe Guerra Arjona)

Read more in our current issue "Bulldozer Politics" (November–December 2024).

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY VALENTINA SARMIENTO CRUZ, MARÍA VIGNAU LORIA, AND FELIPE GUERRA ARJONA For this first trilingual issue of the magazine, we were interested in translating into English and…