https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153 Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Public Culture. daily 1 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 text/html en-US Vol. 11, no. 2 (1999); Vol. 12 (2000) - vol. 16 (2004) Latest Articles: Public Culture TWO Project MUSE® Public Culture 1527-8018 0899-2363 Latest articles in Public Culture. Feed provided by Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173733 <p></p> Aerial photograph of Freedom Square, 2000 In 1955, the African National Congress (ANC) held its historic Congress of the People to ratify its liberation manifesto, the Freedom Charter. This event took place in Kliptown, on the outskirts of Soweto (fig. 1, above), at a site that came to be called Freedom Square in honor of the occasion. Today Freedom Square is an open, windswept tract of land, lying between a shack settlement, a railway line, and a taxi rank and bounded by the back facades of warehouses and wholesale stores. The trees that once lined its edges, providing shade for local traders and commuters, have mostly died, and the farm that once cultivated the land around it has long been ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall Reframing Township Space: The Kliptown Project 2004-10-01 text/html en-US Reframing Township Space: The Kliptown Project 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 35203 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173734 <p></p> Between the University of the Witwatersrand and the inner-city neighborhood of Hillbrow (the densest square kilometer of urban space in Africa) is a giant building that emerges from rubble and ruins. To watch it rise is to see a city and a democracy heaving itself from the debris, carrying with it the physical markers and the tangible echoes of an iniquitous political system but also of a history stretching back long before apartheid. The building is the new Constitutional Court, and it is being erected on the site of the Old Fort, Johannesburg&#39;s notorious prison complex. On this 95,000-square-meter site, the municipal and provincial governments are developing a major urban regeneration project and mixed-use ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall From the Ruins: The Constitution Hill Project 2004-10-01 text/html en-US From the Ruins: The Constitution Hill Project 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 36286 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173735 <p></p> Since 1990, parallel to the period of transition to a democratic society, the AIDS epidemic in South Africa has increased dramatically. The level of HIV infection in the adult population (ages 15-49) rose from 1 percent in 1990 to more than 20 percent in 2000. However, this figure conceals a disparity in the distribution of the disease. The townships are affected far more than the largely white suburbs, while in the townships themselves the highest levels are found in the so-called squatter camps (Shisana and Simbayi 2002).1 The combination of pandemic and democracy has wrought changes specific to sufferers living on the periphery of Johannesburg. People obtained their freedom and fell sick at the same time. The ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall The Suffering Body of the City 2004-10-01 text/html en-US The Suffering Body of the City 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 87675 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173737 <p></p> Jean-Luc Nancy, The Sense of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 9. Nancy Jean-Luc The Sense of the World Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press 1997 9 V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Mudimbe V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge Bloomington Indiana University Press 1988 Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall Writing the World from an African Metropolis 2004-10-01 text/html en-US Writing the World from an African Metropolis 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 84697 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173738 <p></p> Georg Simmel, &#x201C;The Metropolis and Mental Life,&#x201D; in On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 324&#x2013;39. For a critique, read Massimo Cacciari, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993). Simmel Georg The Metropolis and Mental Life in On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings ed. Levine Donald N. Chicago University of Chicago Press 1971 324 339 For a critique, read Cacciari ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall Aesthetics of Superfluity 2004-10-01 text/html en-US Aesthetics of Superfluity 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 94002 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173739 <p></p> Over the past few decades, historians, geographers, sociologists, urban development specialists, and political scientists have produced numerous and sophisticated studies of this specifically Southern African social and urban formation called &#x22;the township.&#x22; Most of these studies have dealt with the hypervisible issues of poverty and dispossession, chronic hunger and malnutrition, and expropriation and disenfranchisement in the context of state-sponsored racial violence. Other studies have examined in detail the conditions of social reproduction and political mobilization in the township. Yet almost ten years after the end of apartheid, we have very few postliberation ethnographies of everyday life in the ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall Soweto Now 2004-10-01 text/html en-US Soweto Now 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 25148 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173740 <p></p> Darrel Bristow-Bovey, &#x201C;Sign o&#x2019; the Times,&#x201D; SL, October 1999, 100. Bristow-Bovey Darrel Sign o&#x2019; the Times SL 10 1999 100 See Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, &#x201C;Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,&#x201D; in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism, ed. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001). See Comaroff Jean and Comaroff John L. Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism ed. ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall Stylizing the Self: The Y Generation in Rosebank, Johannesburg 2004-10-01 text/html en-US Stylizing the Self: The Y Generation in Rosebank, Johannesburg 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 50067 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173741 <p></p> Couch Dancing (Market Theatre, Johannesburg, August 1998; and Castle, Cape Town, November 1998). Couch Dancing Market Theatre Johannesburg 08 1998 and Castle, Cape Town, November 1998 Ivan Vladislavi&#x107;, The Restless Supermarket (Cape Town: David Philip, 2001). Vladislavi&#x107; Ivan The Restless Supermarket Cape Town David Philip 2001 RETREKS is a project that tracks the emergence of postdemocratic metropolitan Johannesburg through four social viewpoints: yuppie/buppie suburbanites, cowboy and cowgirl Calvinists, Anglotribal aristocrats of KwaSandton, and new African immigrants in the ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall A Laboratory of Uncertainty 2004-10-01 text/html en-US A Laboratory of Uncertainty 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 4863 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173742 <p></p> As many readers of Public Culture will already know, the Department of the Treasury&#39;s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the Bush administration recently interpreted the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Berman Amendment (enacted in Section 2502[a] of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, Public Law 100-418) in such a way as to preclude academic journals and presses from modifying the content of certain essays, videos, and other scholarly information submitted to them for publication. The Berman Amendment provided an exemption for &#x22;information or informational materials&#x22;: The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall Editor's Note 2004-10-01 text/html en-US Editor's Note 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 5387 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743 <p></p> The inner city of Johannesburg is about as far away as one can get from the popular image of the African village. Though one of Africa&#39;s most urbanized settings, it is also seen as a place of ruins&#x2014;of ruined urbanization, the ruining of Africa by urbanization. But in these ruins, something else besides decay might be happening. This essay explores the possibility that these ruins not only mask but also constitute a highly urbanized social infrastructure. This infrastructure is capable of facilitating the intersection of socialities so that expanded spaces of economic and cultural operation become available to residents of limited means. This essay is framed around the notion of people as infrastructure, which ... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/173743">Read More</a> Project MUSE® https://muse.jhu.edu/ 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/153/image/coversmall People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg 2004-10-01 text/html en-US People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg 2004-10-01 2004 TWO Project MUSE® 73726 2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00 2004-10-01