Project MUSE®: new formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in new formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USNumber 78 (2013) through current issueLatest Articles: new formations: a journal of culture/theory/politicsTWOProject MUSE®new formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics1741-07890950-2378Latest articles in new formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Race in the Current Conjuncture
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980333
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Issues of ‘race’, ethnicity and nationality have been core concerns of New Formations throughout its history. Indeed, a key early influence on the journal was the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s and 1980s, often credited as one of the points from which the study of racism and racist ideology would develop in the UK and beyond. In his fascinating contribution to this issue, however, Erik Borda investigates the CCCS archive to show that an interest in these issues long pre-dated the publication of such well-known books as The Empire Strikes Back and Policing the Crisis. As such, this issue of the journal continues a long and important tradition.It was in the wake of the second great
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallRace in the Current Conjuncture2026-01-23text/htmlen-USRace in the Current Conjuncture2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®71112026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23Racial Artefacts, National Memories: Institutions of Art Rewrite the Nation’s Racial Legacies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980334
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In December 2021, the British Ministry for Arts, placed a temporary ban on the impending export of a recently sold work of art. Painted by an unknown artist, Two Women Wearing Cosmetic Patches dates to roughly 1650 and depicts two women seated intimately shoulder to shoulder and turned slightly towards one another. On the women’s faces are beauty patches, which are arranged as mirror images of one another and reference a beauty practice that was both widely popular and widely condemned in seventeenth-century Britain.1 Notably, the woman on the right of the portrait is white and the woman on the left is Black. The Black woman is pointing at the white woman, which is a gesture that has been variably interpreted by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallRacial Artefacts, National Memories: Institutions of Art Rewrite the Nation’s Racial Legacies2026-01-23text/htmlen-USRacial Artefacts, National Memories: Institutions of Art Rewrite the Nation’s Racial Legacies2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®1051662026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23‘Racism Is a Pandemic!’: Immunity, Auto-Immunity and COVID-19
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980335
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In the early spring of 2020, as the global COVID-19 pandemic took hold, the UK government issued its first lockdown order on 23 March; on 25 March, it passed a sweeping emergencies act2 to contend with the most challenging public health crisis the NHS had ever faced. The Act (discussed in further detail below) linked together an incredibly wide range of government functions, from indemnifying medical practitioners to expanding police functions. It doesn’t take too much memory-work to cast oneself back to the first six months of the pandemic, to recall the terror of contending with an unknown and highly-contagious, potentially-lethal virus, amid the highly condensed forms of care work that multiplied overnight, in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmall‘Racism Is a Pandemic!’: Immunity, Auto-Immunity and COVID-192026-01-23text/htmlen-US‘Racism Is a Pandemic!’: Immunity, Auto-Immunity and COVID-192026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®897912026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23A Resounding but Unconscious Silence? The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Race and Foundations of an Agenda
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980336
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During its nearly forty years at the University of Birmingham, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1964-2002) made intellectual incursions into a wide range of thematic areas: from local radio stations to youth subcultures, from feminism to the transition from school to work, from theoretical analyses of Marxism to the world of television and mass entertainment, to name but a few emblematic examples. But if there is one area in which the CCCS has undoubtedly left an indelible mark, it is in the area of race and ethnicity. Works such as Policing the Crisis (1978) and The Empire Strikes Back (1982)1 became foundational for new perspectives on thinking about race in Britain and the world, and according to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallA Resounding but Unconscious Silence? The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Race and Foundations of an Agenda2026-01-23text/htmlen-USA Resounding but Unconscious Silence? The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Race and Foundations of an Agenda2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®921182026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23Frantz Fanon and the Diagnosis of Social Pathologies in Post-Imperial Britain
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980337
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In a moment in which anti-migrant rhetoric, exclusionary ethnic nationalisms and authoritarian populisms are on the rise,1 it becomes increasingly important that political theorists do more than offer a moral indictment of racism and xenophobia. Instead, they should focus on the political work that racisms make possible – the hegemonic projects they underwrite and the cross-class coalitions they consolidate; the legal, political and social hierarchies that they embed within a given capitalist regime of accumulation; the techniques of state population management they orient and legitimate; the psychic investments and affects that they mobilise, and the forms of (mis)recognition and belonging that they make possible.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallFrantz Fanon and the Diagnosis of Social Pathologies in Post-Imperial Britain2026-01-23text/htmlen-USFrantz Fanon and the Diagnosis of Social Pathologies in Post-Imperial Britain2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®1317822026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23The Racialised Counterpublics of Transmigration: Cruel Optimism, Postcolonial Commons and a Theory of Reparation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980338
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Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist poignantly captures the myth of the American dream in all its stark reality. As Changez, an international student, recounts his awe of Princeton, the passage becomes indicative of the mesmerising nature of the American dream: ‘This is a dream come true. Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible. I have access to this beautiful campus, I thought, to professors who are titans in their fields and fellow students who are philosopher-kings in the making’.1 Ivy League stardom as a point of entry into an article on racialised transmigration might seem off kilter. The use though of such a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallThe Racialised Counterpublics of Transmigration: Cruel Optimism, Postcolonial Commons and a Theory of Reparation2026-01-23text/htmlen-USThe Racialised Counterpublics of Transmigration: Cruel Optimism, Postcolonial Commons and a Theory of Reparation2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®1128452026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23Diversity in Crisis: Race, Media and Popular Superdiversity in Authoritarian Times
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980339
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In 2001, then Director-General of the BBC Greg Dyke infamously described the corporation as ‘hideously white’, referring to the composition of its senior management team. At the time, he might just as well have been describing British television more broadly, where the presence of people of colour – both on-screen and behind the scenes – remained marginal. Two decades on, however, the media landscape appears transformed. Today, racial diversity appears ubiquitous. A glance at any major streaming platform reveals that Black, Asian and other racially minoritised characters are no longer confined to peripheral or stereotypical roles. They are now often positioned as protagonists – driving the narrative rather than
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallDiversity in Crisis: Race, Media and Popular Superdiversity in Authoritarian Times2026-01-23text/htmlen-USDiversity in Crisis: Race, Media and Popular Superdiversity in Authoritarian Times2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®1238902026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis by Paul Rekret (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980340
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As has been noted widely by scholars of sociology, cultural studies, art theory and others, in recent years there has been a notable ‘turn to cultural work’ within a particular corner of the humanities and social sciences. This is not the place for a full exposition of this wide-ranging intellectual trend – much of which emanates from various strands of UK and USA cultural studies traditions, building on the work of scholars like Angela McRobbie, David Hesmondhalgh, Justin O’Connor and others – but we may briefly summarise some of its most prominent interests. These include the ways in which cultural work – i.e. the day-to-day labour that sustains the contemporary cultural industries and the production of aesthetic
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallTake This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis by Paul Rekret (review)2026-01-23text/htmlen-USTake This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis by Paul Rekret (review)2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®92292026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman, and: Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment and Post-Normal Possibilities by Nick Walker (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980341
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To get formally diagnosed as autistic as an adult in the UK, one must be referred by a GP. The referral will typically include a screening test, such as a short questionnaire, which will be evaluated via a specialist service (and may be rejected). If successful, you will be placed on a waiting list. Although the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance recommends a maximum wait of thirteen weeks, most people wait much longer, sometimes many years. When the time comes, you will be asked to complete an exhaustive questionnaire and then attend an hours-long interview with a qualified professional, with inquiries spanning from birth (caesarean birth is statistically linked to autism) to dietary
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallEmpire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman, and: Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment and Post-Normal Possibilities by Nick Walker (review)2026-01-23text/htmlen-USEmpire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman, and: Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment and Post-Normal Possibilities by Nick Walker (review)2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®224152026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980342
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Italian sea captain Carola Rackete made the difficult decision to bring her ship, Sea-Watch 3, to port at the Italian island of Lampedusa in June 2019. It had carried fifty-three illegal migrants across the mediterranean, and Capt. Rackete’s landing went against the expressed warnings of Italian police and Border forces. The harassment she has faced thereafter – including arrest and being branded an outlaw by a senior government minister – is typical of the misogynistic abuse hurled at women who show solidarity with those excluded from the regimes of legal care frameworks; women who, in so doing, participate in extra-legal or illegal acts of caring, or the practice of pirate care. The crew of Sea-Watch 3 typify the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/617/image/coversmallPirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak (review)2026-01-23text/htmlen-USPirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak (review)2026-01-232026TWOProject MUSE®132462026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-01-23