“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
How to Spell Conflict by Natasha Sadr Haqeian, in Arabic (Kayfa ta, 2018)
James R. Murphy is a teacher from LaGuardia, New York. Murphy considers mathematics to be the most powerful, abstract, and malleable language available to humanity. To introduce his students who don't "like" math to abstract and systematic thinking, he placed a thread between their hands and taught them how to make shapes with it. "How to Spell Conflict" traces a thread that has been running through our fingers for centuries. This thread has evolved from the tangible shapes our hands made in childhood to the more elusive computational algorithms that occupy our fingers today as they constantly interact with digital devices. By tracing this thread through its various twists and turns, the study evokes a discussion of the meaning of collective agency, aiming to rethink current models of perception, education, and power.