Interventions

Welcome to Interventions, an experimental space where authors rehearse new ideas, reframe questions, or play unbridled within Arcade’s field of the humanities in the world. These short posts embrace the incomplete, the imperfect, and the indeterminate, but they may become much more: for example, the record of a thinker’s turn toward a new paradigm or the rough draft of a chapter in a new book. Rapid publication and immediate responses permit Interventions to foster conversation. The tone of the posts may range from personal to political, while maintaining a critical edge.

Published regularly, Interventions are often freestanding contributions to Arcade, but some may join our feature called Colloquies. Inquiries and submissions are received by the editor of Interventions.

How to Watch "Get Out" Again

When watching the film "Get Out," what if white people and non-black people of color saw their responsibility as more than nodding knowingly at microaggressions or bits of cotton stuffing? What if they realized that "Get Out" can also be about what it feels like to be themselves in America?

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"Lady Bird," the Iraq War, and Not Quite Nostalgia

What’s unique about the film "Lady Bird" is that its nostalgia for the USA of 2002-2003 isn’t quite nostalgia. With a strange gentleness, the film builds itself around the feeling of recognizing the scary present in a past you can still manage to love.

If You Can't Say Unqualified, Say Ungrateful

Donald Trump did not invent the ungrateful black athlete stereotype, but he made it familiar. The stereotype recasts professionals at the top of their game as that black person who doesn’t know how to do their job. Maxine Waters. Frederica Wilson. La David Johnson. Barack Obama. “Ungrateful” is only the latest way to say that a black worker is unworthy because they are black.

The Real Economic Consequences of Martin Luther

Religious reformers like Martin Luther laid the groundwork for the later emergence of Liberal political economy by purging late-medieval conceptions of the monetary instrument as a potentially boundless public utility from the collective imagination.

How Toussaint de Bréda became ‘the Opening’

Toussaint Louverture is celebrated by some as a saint worthy of his namesake. Recent work by historian Philippe Girard paints a less saintly portrait of this seminal figure of the Haitian Revolution.

Exit Monty Hall, through door number 3

On the power of probability to haunt the ontology of everyday things.

re: F@ck Work?

Universal Basic Income or a federal Job Guarantee? The discussion continues as to whether we should pursue a redistributive welfare system or a predistributive politics that reorganizes social provisioning.

F@ck Work?

Those who think Universal Basic Income represents a progressive future ought to think twice about the laissez-faire assumptions behind such proposals. Perhaps the future should be one where work is not rendered obsolete but made a meaningful, inclusive, and collective endeavor.

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