A Brief History of Mapping
by Stacy Hardy. In 1921, the independent Polish scholar Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski appropriated mathematician Eric Temple Bell’s epigram, “the map is not the thing mapped” to coin the phrase, “the map is not the territory”. In The Medium is the Message, Marshall McLuhan rehashed the argument – that all media are “extensions” of our human […]
The Chronic Presents a New Cartography for Africa
Since its launch in 2011, every edition of The Chronic has engaged with this question: when will the new emerge – and if it is already here, how do we decipher it? But no edition has addressed this query as centrally as our current project on new cartographies. Broadly, the project contests the narrowness of […]
The Internet is Afropolitan
Achille Mbembe discusses the history and horizon of digital communication and identity in the African continent with Bregtje van der Haak. Mbembe suggests that what some regard as the explosion of the Internet is really just the continuation of the age old cultures in the new age of the Afropolitan. Bregtje van der Haak: The […]
Situation is Critical
Jeremy Weate moves from text to context in search of the current state of African writing. I’ve just received my review copy of Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them. I’m not sure I can stomach it all the way through, still less write about it. The tome lies on my table, a lead weight too heavy to […]
Gateway
A video-work from Berni Searle‘s “Black smoke rising” trilogy; the title alluding to the controversial N2 Gateway Housing Project in Cape Town. Entering the premises, the Chronic asks: whose house is this? Berni Searle’s video features on the cover of the Burnin’ and A-Lootin’ section of Chimurenga Vol. 16: The Chimurenga Chronic (available here). Set in the week 18-24 May 2008, the Chronic, imagines […]