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.
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Unsentimental Vistas
In the endless debate between the old and the new, does sentimentality get in the way? How do we reconcile the desire to preserve the urban landscapes of the past with the need to meet the living needs of the present?
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Costs and Crossings: on Apolline Traoré’s "Borders"
Traoré’s 2017 film reminds us that the border itself is a problematic institution. Even in its most stripped-down form, a border exists for the exercise of power against those populations whose movements it controls. Who crosses—and at what cost—depends on lines of race, class, and gender. 
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The End of Nationalism?
Kosovo illustrates how nationhood can bring peace and hope to a community in spite of nationalism's legacy of war, historical revisionism, and oppression.  
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Egg-hunting in Baghdad
A translated excerpt from a memoir describing Iraq during the Gulf War and the misery and uncertainty plaguing those living in war zones.