What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
How to Remember Your Dreams by Amr Ezzat, in Arabic (Kayfa ta, 2019)
Do you really want to remember your dreams? I often wish I could forget my dreams, perhaps because I sometimes remember them so much that I get angry at people for what they did to me. I feel sad about what happened as if it happened all over again last night, or I feel the unfortunate joy of having a moment that fascinated me, of thinking I actually answered some work emails or finally sent my clothes to the dry cleaners. I remember in detail how my death happened more than once, when perhaps the only benefit of dying, whether we go to heaven or hell, or nowhere, is that we won't have to worry about it anymore. Until then, what I sometimes want, as I get into bed and remember my day, is to suddenly discover that it's nothing but dreams. I think about how I'd like to write them down, and then open my eyes to the world and to other dreams.
Amr Ezzat is an Egyptian writer who studied engineering and philosophy. He worked as an engineer, then a journalist, then a legal researcher, and as an article writer for several newspapers and periodicals. He remembers his dreams well.