Soapbox Journal for Cultural Analysis

15/10/2025

“Understood from both this context and Halabi’s broader work about Israel’s occupation of Palestine, We Have Always Known the Wind’s Direction appears as an interrogation of the nuclear as yet another form of colonial violence. While the 184 Palestinian journalists killed (as of August 2025) since October 2023 make it unmistakable that we need more press and more photojournalistic evidence of the current genocide, the alternative aesthetics employed in Halabi’s work hold the complementary potential to critically engage with the veiled anti-democratic underpinnings that produce Israel’s military strategy.[5] In the absence of shock, whispered rumours of an ominous force that lies underground do not manifest as a break but remain ongoing.” (Ischa Borger)

A new essay by Ischa Borger “Rumour Aesthetics: How Inas Halabi Interrogates Environmental Colonialism Beyond Visualizing the Invisible in Palestine” is now online. You can read the full piece on our website.

Image: “After the Last Sky”, De Appel, 2023, Amsterdam. By Özgür Atlagan.

08/10/2025

This Friday and Saturday we will be attending the bring your own book fair at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie with many copies of our journal. Come find us! 📚

06/10/2025

“A key pillar of that hauntological thought is absence. The absence of a solid definition for the ghost is core to its existence–to understand ghosts is to admit uncertainty in that very understanding: “Its own status as discourse or epistemology is never stable, as the ghost also questions the formation of knowledge itself and specifically what is placed outside it” (del Pilar Blanco and Peeren 9). This elusiveness is at the heart of my interest in ghosts, and the notion of haunting; the same elusiveness I associate with feelings and experiences I can’t explain, that make people turn to science, spirituality, or superstition. But what happens when we look deeper into this impalpability?” (Milo Sharafeddine)

Thinking of ghosthood through the contradictions of absence and non-linearity, this recently published piece by Milo Sharafeddine elaborates on the haunting of time, spaces and personhood. Read the full text on our website.

Illustration by Milo Sharafeddine

06/10/2025

05/10/2025

“Rather than functioning as a blank ahistorical canvas for study, textiles are already inscribed with their own memories of sourcing and production; hands-on practice situates these within a continuous “narrative of anticipated use” (70). In this way the act of stitching shifts repair from the zone of theory to practice—a way of moving through the world and caring for those within it.” (Ren Ewart).

An essay by Ren Ewart, written in 2022, on the relation of textile repair to concepts of language, care and labour is now online. You can read the full piece on our website.

18/06/2025

Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating the launch of our new issue, On the Uses of Absence!

We would also like to thank our guest speakers , , .lopes.santos and Eugenie Brinkema for their wonderful talks and performances on their engagements with the theme of absence. Physical copies of the issue are now available for purchase in stores and on our website.

We are very grateful for the generous contribution from ASCA (Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis) which made this event possible, and for the amazing hospitality of !

Photos by Matjia Stojanovic - .stoja

15/06/2025

New podcast episode!

This instalment of Unbox the Soap has emerged from an rMA tutorial on Q***r Ecologies, where students explored the interaction of ecology, q***rness, and negativity. This episode features Franek Dziduch, Richard-Josephine Weichert and Nia Daskalova, who introduce, discuss and analyse three objects: Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poem “Explanation in the Margins”, p.Wrecks’ feature on Menes the Pharoah’s track “Impest”, and Daisy Lafarge’s poem “dog rose duende”. Together, they explore how these objects can become portals to reading for “q***r ecologies.”

07/06/2025

New interview up on our website! 🔥

Talking to Professor Steven Swarbrick about the theoretical intersections of ecology and q***r negativity.



Interview and editing:


Link in bio!

05/06/2025

NEW PODCAST EPISODE 🚍📍

The newest episode of (Un)Box the Soap Podcast features five performative readings loosely connected to the theme of flixbus poetry, or, more broadly, exploring the topic of contemporary travel.

The works submitted unfold across two episodes. You can listen to the first one here. In the second episode, we invite you to listen to ‘Internationale Bussy’ by Luke Worthy, ‘Munster to Trento, March 4th, 2024’ by Annalisa Volcan, ‘A Bus Ride into the Night’ by Susanna Olmi, ‘We Flixbuse’ by Franek Dziduch, and ‘Who is Driving this Bus’ by Emily Marie Passos Duffy.

You can also read along while listening to the episode, as all texts are available on our website

Contributors .olmi

02/06/2025

BOOK PREVIEW: ‘On the Uses of Absence’
Soapbox Issue 6.0

Available online and in stores from June 11th!
Join us for the launch event at De Nieuwe Anita 🪻

DESIGNERS: ._

AUTHORS: .lopes.santos

SPECIAL THANKS:

This book was made possible with the generous contribution of NICA (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis).

Image credit to the designers ._

17/05/2025

The newest episode of (Un)Box the Soap Podcast features four performative readings loosely connected to the theme of flixbus poetry, or, more broadly, exploring the topic of contemporary travel.

The works submitted unfold across two episodes. In this first episode, we invite you to listen to ‘Familial Landscape’ by Haoran Zhi, ’Flixbus Chronicles’ by Elis Lipinski, and ‘Lake’ by Elia Meregalli. Finally, the episode closes with ‘EUSEXUA & The State of Being on a Flixbus Ride’ by Petra Parčetić in collaboration with producer Thomas Hell.

You can also read along while listening to the episode, as all texts are available on our website.

.ski

31/03/2025

CALL FOR PAPERS 7.0: BETWEEN BODIES AND HOMES

To feel like we belong is one of our most common desires. Our bodily relation to home is not a simple one: it is marked by hostile power structures. These structures plunge the body into an interconnected web of demarcations, mediations, and hierarchisation, which determine one’s ability or failure to feel at home. Race, gender, ability, and class are factors that designate one’s sense of home. Labels further differentiate between bodies, some rendered political (“immigrant,” “refugee”), while others insidiously a-political (“expat”). How do we think with the body in ways that address its complicated relationship to home? What are the ways to engage with our bodily positionalities that may allow for a more equitable habitation?

Thinking with aestheSis that privileges sensing over totalising reasoning of aestheTics, Mar​​ía Lugones sees the body through its permeability, which “allows us to reconceive about the world we live in.” Turning towards the sensorial relationality, we discover that the fixed, man-made, ‘rational’ lines that demarcate home and body as separate, contain leaks. Leaks that bring the body home. For its eighth issue, Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis invites (young) researchers, (established) scholars, and creatives alike to submit works that consider practices, experiences, and methodologies that uncover punctures and cavities of structures, lines, boundaries, and borders. What seeps, spills, or flows through these holes? What exists in between home and body that informs who and where we are? What are the moments when the body and home are torn apart? And when do they collapse into one?

Find all the details and information via the link in bio.