The Test
Read the following text carefully: “Know thyself, thus says the quotation and thus I tell you myself!” says SOCRATES. To whom belongs the quotation? Science fiction writer João Barreiros takes the test. José Esteves wakes up with all the psychosomatic symptoms that come with this sort of day. Sickness. Asthenia. Cold sweat. Sensing […]
The New Normal
Oscar Pistorius first gained international fame amid a raging debate over whether prosthetic blades would give him unfair advantage against able-bodied athletes. Today, the track star finds himself in the middle of a more serious controversy: whether he intentionally shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Both cases raise serious questions regarding humanity. Gabriella […]
Our cyborg past: Medieval artificial memory as mindware upgrade
By Ruth Evans The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been ‘natural-born cyborgs,’ that is, they have always collaborated and merged with non-biological props and aids in order to find better environments for thinking. These ‘mindware’ upgrades (I borrow the term ‘mindware’ from Clark, 2001) extend beyond the […]
Les Saignantes
A young woman, beautiful, 20-something, is fucking an old man. She fucks him like a rubber doll. Her hands are on his thighs. His mouth is open. The scene unfolds in rapid cuts. The woman: circling, incessant motion. Her tits. Her arse. The man. His face is sweating. The camera […]
Yellow Fever, NKO?
Skin bleaching is often described as a manifestation of ‘colo-mentality’. However, argues Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, mimesis here is both an affirmation and a contestation of power. From Lagos to Los Angeles, from the Congo to Cuba, who can argue that colonialism has not had a devastating effect on the black world’s perception of itself, […]