The Funambulist

16/01/2026

In this text, Lily H. Chumley traces the making of the US dollar as a paper currency tied to histories of sovereignty, aesthetics, and competing institutions. She shows how the design of dollar bills speaks to historical junctures and helps us see the cultural potency of this money as much as its transformation into a global currency. Understanding the dollar as physical currency opens up the space to consider the persistence of cash alongside struggles to reform money today, from digital to new sovereign monies.

Read more in our current issue "Follow the Money" (January–February 2026).

In this text, Lily H. Chumley traces the making of the US dollar as a paper currency tied to histories of sovereignty, aesthetics, and competing institutions. She shows how the design of dollar bills…

15/01/2026

When thinking about money and neocolonialism, few instances appear as striking as the CFA franc imposed by France on fourteen west and central african countries; a monetary apparatus central in the maintenance of what came to be known as “Françafrique.” To understand its mechanism and, crucially, how monetary sovereignty operates, we talked with Dakar-based economist Ndongo Samba Sylla.

Read more in our current issue "Follow the Money" (January–February 2026).

When thinking about money and neocolonialism, few instances appear as striking as the CFA franc imposed by France on fourteen west and central african countries; a monetary apparatus central in the…

12/01/2026

In this text, Hicham Safieddine traces the colonial history of money in Palestine, showing how imperial and Zionist financial systems erased native sovereignty through currency design, banking control, and asset expropriation. From Britain’s monetary partition of Greater Syria to Israel’s shekelization of the Palestinian economy, he exposes how finance served as a tool of conquest, settler identity formation, and economic domination, used to better erase Palestine both symbolically and materially.

Read more in our current issue "Follow the Money" (January–February 2026).

In this text, Hicham Safieddine traces the colonial history of money in Palestine, showing how imperial and Zionist financial systems erased native sovereignty through currency design, banking control…

08/01/2026

In this conversation, Nisrin Elamin and Laleh Khalili discuss the intricate relations between capitalism and imperialism from Sudan outward. They examine together how “empire-making” projects bring together new imperial actors like the United Arab Emirates with Western imperialism. They locate how, by following the money in Sudan, looking at the roles of gold, agricultural commodities, cross-border trade, and financial infrastructure, we can understand the current war as embedded in the fabric of colonial capitalism. Finally, they imagine how activists can follow the money, working through mutual aid networks and exposing the financial ties that underscore genocides from Sudan to Palestine.

Read more in our current issue "Follow the Money" (January–February 2026).

In this conversation, Nisrin Elamin and Laleh Khalili discuss the intricate relations between capitalism and imperialism from Sudan outward. They examine together how “empire-making” projects bring…

05/01/2026

We are happy to share with you our new issue "Follow the Money" (January–February 2026), where we reflect on imperial capitalism, colonial plunder, monetary sovereignty, and revolutionary currencies.

For our 63rd issue, we teamed up with Tunisian anthropologist and visual artist Myriam Amri and invite you to "Follow the Money" with us. In it, we enter the crevices of a capitalist system and trace it back to its central nodes: property, land, capital, and class. We read how money is central to colonial and imperial projects, but also how sovereignty and the liberation of our monetary imaginary can be tools of emancipation.

Cover artwork by Adriana Martínez Barón.

ORDER YOUR COPY: https://thefunambulist.net/shop/63-follow-the-money

15/12/2025

For a long time, we wanted to publish a sharp yet nuanced text on the instrumentalization of Indigenous identities by the Bolivian State. We are happy to propose such a text today through the carefully articulated words of Magali Vienca Copa Pabón. She describes such an instrumentalization through the politics at work behind the association of Bolivia’s “plurinational” administration with the whipala, while refusing to consider the State as a monolithic entity, rather than a battleground.

This text has been translated from Spanish by María Vignau Loría.

Read more in our current issue "Building Trans Communities" (November–December 2025).

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY MARÍA VIGNAU LORÍA For a long time, we wanted to publish a sharp yet nuanced text on the instrumentalization of Indigenous identities by the Bolivian State. We are happy to…

02/12/2025

Up until now, Sicily had been absent from our pages. Thanks to the relationship established by Shivangi Mariam Raj with the island, we can remedy this with a text by Giuseppe Procida about the history and, crucially, the present of Sicilian resistance against the Italian state’s extractivist policies, as well as its complicities with atlanticist militarism and Fortress Europe’s border enforcement.

Read more in our current issue "Building Trans Communities" (November–December 2025).

Up until now, Sicily had been absent from our pages. Thanks to the relationship established by Shivangi Mariam Raj with the island, we can remedy this with a text by Giuseppe Procida about the history…

01/12/2025

In March 2024, Beshouy Botros and Léopold met in a cafe in New Haven in the United States. Beshouy described their research, and more particularly some aspects of what they write about in the following text. This was the genesis for this issue which was timed so that this text could be included. In it, Beshouy builds a historical reflection around two “gender clinics” in colonial Casablanca and Cairo, and how to understand the foundational infrastructures for medical transition in relation to these very particular temporal and spatial circumstances.

Read more in our current issue "Building Trans Communities" (November–December 2025).

In March 2024, Beshouy Botros and Léopold met in a cafe in New Haven in the United States. Beshouy described their research, and more particularly some aspects of what they write about in the…

28/11/2025

We commissioned this text to the two authors of the book 'Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds' (2024), Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift. It describes the ongoing transphobic reaction in Britain, particularly crystallized by the British Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling. Against this, trans communities and allies forge practices of solidarity, care, and abolition feminism, resisting state violence and cultivating collective safety.

Read more in our current issue "Building Trans Communities" (November–December 2025).

PHOTOS BY TARUN IYER We commissioned the following text to the two authors of the book Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (2024), Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift.

24/11/2025

In this multigenre text, Shripad Sinnakaar traces three trajectories to understand the Hijra communities in India. Flitting across beauty parlors, local trains, TikTok videos, street protests, goddess’ temples, and Dalit bastis, these trajectories introduce us to identities and socialities that refuse to be subsumed under the Western definitions of trans.

Read more in our current issue "Building Trans Communities" (November–December 2025).

In this multigenre text, Shripad Sinnakaar traces three trajectories to understand the Hijra communities in India. Flitting across beauty parlors, local trains, TikTok videos, street protests, goddess’…

21/11/2025

This discussion with La Liga de Salud Trans (Trans Health League) hints at a collective effort to make the demedicalization and collectivization of healthcare a field of resistance and agency for trans people in Colombia. Advocating for alternative health protocols, redress for violence, and exchanges with anti-racist and feminist movements are all actions to counter a health system that reproduces the social hierarchy necessary for the functioning of the patriarchal capitalist system based on cisnormativity.

This conversation has been translated from Spanish by Valentina Sarmiento Cruz.

Read more in our current issue "Building Trans Communities" (November–December 2025).

CONVERSATION WITH LA LIGA DE SALUD TRANS TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY VALENTINA SARMIENTO CRUZ This discussion with La Liga de Salud Trans (Trans Health League) hints at a collective effort to make the…