Berfrois

Goodbye, Hello

Goodbye, Hello

Thank you for reading Berfrois (2009-2022)!

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Eli S. Evans: The Writer vs. the Pandemic III

Eli S. Evans: The Writer vs. the Pandemic III

Constant specter of illness and death, increasing likelihood of unemployment, nail in the coffin of the post-World War II order.

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Justice for Floyd

Justice for Floyd

Here we go again. Another black person killed by the US police. Another wave of multiracial resistance. Another cycle of race talk on the corporate media.

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Marian Janssen on Elizabeth Bishop

Marian Janssen on Elizabeth Bishop

Thomas Travisano paints a structured, sensitive portrait of Bishop. He is at his best when explaining her work, which he immaculately interweaves with her life.

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“Insurrection” and Black Citizens

“Insurrection” and Black Citizens

The very terminology—“black citizen”—was, of course, an oxymoron upon the birth of this very nation...

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“Excess Deaths” and British Political Culture

“Excess Deaths” and British Political Culture

The Financial Times reported today that the UK has the worst death rate from Covid-19 ‘among countries that produce comparable data’...

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The Long Civil Rights Movement

The Long Civil Rights Movement

This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927 is a compelling and exhaustive work that examines the long history of anti-black violence and racism in Kansas...

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Emile Bojesen and Ansgar Allen: Agamben and Techno-Fascism

Emile Bojesen and Ansgar Allen: Agamben and Techno-Fascism

Professors who switch to teaching online are the ‘perfect equivalent of the university teachers who in 1931 swore allegiance to the Fascist regime’. So says Giorgio Agamben...

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Red London

Red London

Conventional accounts of London’s history concentrate on the ‘two cities’—twin centres of wealth and power, each with its monumental buildings...

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With a Care

With a Care

I came to realize in a series of waves the enormous impact this pandemic would have on the domestic workforce. The first was quite early on, before the travel ban, school closures, and state shutdowns.

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People Look Like Emails by David Beer

People Look Like Emails by David Beer

In pandemic times I’m picturing Jason Fearn sat amongst his chaotic equipment, formulating a sinister and foreboding soundtrack...

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Classic Dom

Classic Dom

Like many proverbs in English, the term comes from Shakespeare. A “petard” was a small bomb, used for blowing up the fortifications of castles.

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How the Art World Worked in a Non-market Context

How the Art World Worked in a Non-market Context

Klara Kemp-Welch’s latest book, Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965-1981, challenges the idea of unconnected isolated art production

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Stay Arrogant?

Stay Arrogant?

Amid the weight and seriousness of life-changing and life-ending events, how can the national conversation be dominated for three days by the bad behaviour of Dominic Cummings during the lockdown?

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Stay Sileni

Stay Sileni

In Titian’s early 16th century painting, as Meis reads it, the somnolent Silenus, who echoes the alert god’s posture as he is carried behind him by his followers...

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Cabo Verdeans

Cabo Verdeans

We shared a Creole language and the open, relaxed customs, known as morabeza, that are unique to Cabo Verde; only we knew how to compose and sing morna music...

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