We live in a moment of “apocalyptic time,” the “time of the end of time.” Ours is a moment of global ecological crisis, of the ever-impending collapse of capital. That we live on the brink is too clear. What is not, however, is our ability to imagine the moment after this dual crisis. In recent years, African artists have begun to articulate this “moment after,” ushering in a new paradigm in African literature and film that speculates upon postcrisis African futures. Writers and filmmakers such as Nigeria’s Efe Okogu and Kenya’s Wanuri Kahiu have imagined future African topographies—spaces that have felt the fullest effects of climate change, nuclear radiation, and the imbalances of global capitalism. Biopolitics, sovereignty, and the human have all been reconfigured in these African science fictions. Okogu and Kahiu’s futurist aesthetics are specters that loom over our present, calling for a radically reimagined politics of the now.

This essay traces the emergence of a new contemporary novel form at the conjunction of global violence in the wake of the Cold War, digital hyperconnectivity, and a mediated infrastructure of sympathy. Since the first Gulf War, and more so, in the rhetoric presaging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have come to accept that there is very little difference between the technologies used to wage war and those used to view it. This essay argues that the novels of our time are not contiguous with contemporary cinematic or televisual or new media genres in representing the immediacy of violence, but are rather texts that graph the sedimented and recursive history of such mediation. Their alternative way of documenting “witness”—that is, of abstracting the architectonics of testimonial work—urges us to focus not so much on the question of visibility—and its stock thematics of overexposure and desensitization—as on the legibility of this new mode of witnessing. The distinction between visibility and legibility amounts to calibrating differently the work of witnessing in novels, their textual and tropological play with multiple modes of spectatorship and engagement, and their distinctively different braiding of the factual and the evidentiary in comparison with genres of the visual.

“Dramaturging The Tempest: A Pedagogical Forum,” uses dramaturgy—the interface between research and its practical application in the theatre—as a way of preparing The Tempest for a college course curriculum. The article aims to show instructors how to teach dramaturgy as an explication of The Tempest and how to use The Tempest as a means of teaching dramaturgy. The objective is for students to emerge from the course conversant in how to be dramaturgs in the preparation of a professional production. Dramaturgy also illuminates the highly metadramatic underscoring of The Tempest, a play that constantly invites its own characters to be audience to, and critics of, Prospero’s carefully constructed “worldview.”

My brief for this journal issue is to write an essay on The Tempest that can be used as an explication de texte for teaching postcolonial studies. As a practicing dramaturg, I’ve decided to focus on postcolonial dramaturgy. What does a dramaturg do? What can be gained from dramaturgical teaching, and how is it prepared for? What skills will students develop?

In this series of essays, The Road Less Traveled, noted bioethicists share their stories and the personal experiences that prompted them to pursue the field. These memoirs are less professional chronologies and more descriptions of the seminal touchstone events and turning points that led—often unexpectedly—to their career path.

In his controversial 2001 novel, The Guest (Sonnim), Hwang Sok-yong tells the story of elderly Korean American Ryu Yosŏp, who embarks on a journey back to his childhood home in Hwanghae province, now North Korea. At once a spatial, temporal, and psychological return, the novel revisits the early years of the Korean War to unveil the truth behind one of the war’s most horrific crimes: the slaughter of 35,000 Korean civilians in the Shinch’on massacre of 1950. In particular, Hwang examines the arrival of the two “guests” of the title—Christianity and Marxism—during the colonial period and their subsequent role in the violence of Shinch’on. By making visible forms of political agency achieved through the assimilation of these two guests, the novel complicates the ideological binaries that appear to have arrested decolonization of the Korean peninsula. Watson’s article reveals how Hwang’s experimental, multivocal narrative structure rewrites usual historical accounts of the Korean War and division by attending to the spatialized production of regions, nation, state, and diaspora. It offers a rethinking of the congealed ideologies, stories, desires, and topologies of this not-yet-postcolonial peninsular.

Vivek Chibber’s new book has stirred up a good amount of controversy and passionate position-taking in recent months. This review probes its avowedly Marxist critique of subaltern studies in order to test the validity of some of its central claims and to offer a provisional appraisal of its political implications. A related question is what such a critique might have to offer literary studies, postcolonial or otherwise.

The historical novel is one of the most popular and critically significant genres of postcolonial writing, but, to date, almost no systematic scholarship is dedicated to it. This essay proposes theoretical and critical parameters for exploring this genre. It begins with the observation that plausibility is a key principle articulated by many postcolonial writers and explores how framing novels in these terms, as a kind of realism, requires readers to negotiate heterogeneous structures of reference—and, in particular, to read imaginary characters as abstractions of historical phenomena. The second half of the paper explores the theoretical implications of this ontological heterogeneity, suggesting how the genre’s conventions are inflected by normative patterns of gender, race, and temporality. Overall, I propose that it is possible to read the postcolonial historical novel as a kind of allegory, and I offer the term allegorical realism to describe this paradoxical mixing of conceptual and affective knowledge.

Bioethics and Defense offers information and commentary on ethical issues arising at the interface between healthcare and warfare. For submissions, contact Griffin Trotter at trotter@slu.edu.

The writings of Johann Gottfried Herder are not only striking in their vehement opposition to European imperialism. They arguably present the first attempt to ground anti-imperialism not just morally but epistemologically. Herder does this through his encounter with Kant’s precritical theory, augmented by a novel philosophy of language. Herder believed philosophy needs to reformulate its aims in terms of anthropology, history, and aesthetics. In the process, he found himself facing what I am calling the antinomy of universal reason. Reason is a universal characteristic of humanity. In its expressions, however, reason is plural and diverse. This antinomy has carried through into postcolonial theory, where it presents some serious epistemological and methodological challenges. Using the examples of Dipesh Chakrabarty, Achille Mbembe, and Gayatri Spivak, I show what these challenges look like. In conclusion, I inquire into Herder’s attempts to find a methodology that allows a critique of imperialism while recognizing the antinomous workings of universal reason.

This section welcomes submissions addressing literature as a means to explore ethical issues arising in healthcare. “Literature” will be understood broadly, including fiction and creative nonfiction, illness narratives, drama, and poetry; film studies might be considered if the films are adaptations from a literary work. Topics include in-depth analysis of literary works as well as theoretical contributions, discussions, and commentary about narrative approaches to disease and medicine, the way literature shapes the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals, the role of speculative fiction as a testing ground for future scenarios in healthcare, and so on. Articles discussing the uses of literature for bioethics education and outreach will be particularly appreciated. Research on literature not originally written in English will be considered as long as it has also been published in translation. Submissions should include an abstract and should conform to the CQ Guidelines for Contributors. To submit an article or discuss a suitable topic, write to Antonio Casado da Rocha at antonio.casado@ehu.es.

The Caduceus in Court welcomes readers to submit articles on legal updates and discussions of issues in healthcare law to Ben Rich at barich@ucdavis.edu.