Author response for Cold War Assemblages: decolonisation to digital roundtable

Abstract

As I read the rigorous and thought-provoking reviews of my book from Bhekizizwe Peterson, Uhuru Phalafala, Christopher Ouma, and Grace A. Musila, I find myself fixated on certain phrases and terms that they have activated, perhaps re-activated. “Untidiness,” “obfuscation,” “networks,” “magazines,” “Africa” and “I am a Cold War ruin” struck me the most, and I respond with a short glossary of these terms. I compile these in the shadow of the memory of a brisk and cool Johannesburg evening first spent at the University of Witwatersrand, and then at a seaside-themed Greek restaurant where conversations continued heatedly and happily, utterly unaware of a plague to come only a month later, which was to steal so much from us.