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.


 

Image by Byron Browne; Graphic Design by Sheena Lai
By
Lin Li
In September 2017, a memorial dedicated to survivors of the "comfort women" system was unveiled in downtown San Francisco. As the largest modern sexual slavery system, the "comfort women" system was created and overseen by the Imperial Japanese Government between 1931 and 1945.
mu-earliestgestures.jpg
Earliest Gestures
Can you recall your earliest gesture? Perhaps not consciously, but traces of these first attempts to orient our bodies in space linger in our everyday experiences. 
mu-orderrealism.jpg
Returning to Order through Realism
Law and Order is the familiar rallying cry for a generation of contemporary right-wing politicians from Poland and Turkey to Brazil and the USA. In the context of such a political program, difference, change, and cultural others must be avoided as disruptions of the safety that order is supposed to represent.
mu-sanchosshit.jpg
The Problem of Sancho's Shit
Are there limits to the pursuit of realism in fiction? For Cervantes, at least, those limits are to be found somewhere in between three hundred goats and the bodily needs of Sancho Panza. 
468F6A77-703B-4BB0-BBFC-0B78FFA97E9F.jpeg
Against Hate: "Hello, Brother" (V)
In the wake of the massacre in New Zealand, a reflection on the need to confront hatred, to come together as one human community and to learn that our difference is the formative experience of existence on earth.