CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-12-22DOI: 10.1177/09213740231223842
Ana Ugarte
{"title":"All things PanchitX: Peanuts, biopolitics, and the global south","authors":"Ana Ugarte","doi":"10.1177/09213740231223842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231223842","url":null,"abstract":"Exploring the genealogies, lexical ancestors, and uses of the term “Panchito,” this scrutiny delves into the vast cultural representations, popular attitudes, and othering discourse of this disparaging epithet for Latin Americans in Spain. The piece takes stock of the naming of othered Panchos in Spain, the United States, and Latin America––tapping into an Xness of the Global South where the lives of peanuts and peanuts as people intersect through the conceptual reduction and dismissal of humans and botanical life. Panchito originates as a racializing metaphor that compares Latin American persons with roasted peanuts, also called “panchitos” in Spain. Drawing from a posthumanist and materialist take on biopolitics, the essay unearths links among persons, peanut plants, animals, and sounds shaping PanchitX ontologies. The botanical properties of this grain legume, the history of peanuts’ connections to slavery, as well as peanuts’ strong presence as a Latin American “thing” in Global South imaginaries are all pursued here to provide occasions for new paradigms, insights, and questions on global LatinX cultures.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"74 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138945411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-12-21DOI: 10.1177/09213740231223818
Raquel Vega-Durán
{"title":"The third vertex of the Latinx triangle: Latin America and the repopulation of rural Spain","authors":"Raquel Vega-Durán","doi":"10.1177/09213740231223818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231223818","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1980s, a significant number of Latin Americans began moving to urban centers in the Iberian peninsula. These arrivals grew exponentially. By 2022, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela each had more than 100,000 citizens in Spain. While cities have been the most visible poles of attraction for Latin American immigration, small towns have also witnessed the arrival of Latin Americans. Rural Spain, commonly known as “empty Spain,” had been shrinking and waning in silence for decades, due to an aging population and the migration of young adults to the cities. In 2021 Spain’s central government started to speak of migration as a solution for depopulation, but this proposal’s origins date further back. In 2000 the local government of Aguaviva, a small town in Teruel, decided to bring back life to “empty Spain” by inviting Argentinian families to settle there in exchange for employment and housing. Since then, many more towns have followed suit. The documentary Aguaviva: La vida en tres maletas (2004, “Aguaviva: Life in Three Suitcases”), directed by Verónica Marchiaro and Mario Burbano, offers the story of this first rural repopulation. A close look at the diverse lived experiences portrayed in the documentary, and its different points of views on hospitality, can help guide current conversations on repopulation.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"24 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139166156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-10-20DOI: 10.1177/09213740231205015
Marat Kaldybayev
{"title":"A horse in the funeral rites of the Turks as an ethnocultural marker","authors":"Marat Kaldybayev","doi":"10.1177/09213740231205015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231205015","url":null,"abstract":"The presented article is dedicated to such an element of funeral rites of various Turkic cultures as the accompanying burial of a horse and the use of horses in the funeral rites of nomadic and settled peoples of Central Asia. According to the author’s hypothesis, based on source study and own research, the presence of a horse in funeral rites is one of the ethnocultural markers uniting Turkic cultures, starting from the ancient Turkic time and ending in the late Middle Ages. Thus, the purpose of the article is to investigate the transformation of the Turkic funeral rite in the Middle Ages in order to substantiate the ritual of horse burial as a common cultural marker of the Turkic peoples. The research results propose a comprehensive periodisation of this phenomenon, critically analysing the unique attributes of each period. The materials under study span across several cultures from the Middle Ages to the New Age. Each period is scrutinized to elucidate its features and peculiarities that shaped its evolution and exerted influence on the subsequent progression of traditions. The research underscores the key determinants driving the trajectory of these traditions within specific historical epochs for each of the investigated peoples.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135569508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-10-16DOI: 10.1177/09213740231206115
Seb Franklin
{"title":"Logical circuitry—perverse circuitry","authors":"Seb Franklin","doi":"10.1177/09213740231206115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231206115","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues that the figure of the circuit that recurs across Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt, which might be too easily treated as a passing metaphor, illuminates the book's most significant concerns: the problem of unity; relationships among the economic, the ethical, and the juridical; and the reticulated dynamics of ‘free’ labor and racialized slavery in the circulation of value. Building on Ferreira da Silva's references to circuitry, the essay posits the emergent, recursive circuits of cybernetic social theory and ecology as unintentional yet strikingly revealing diagrams of the capital-race dynamic.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"74 6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136142139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-10-15DOI: 10.1177/09213740231206116
Nicholas De Genova
{"title":"Unleashing the capacity of Blackness: The scene of total violence and the ongoing present of slavery","authors":"Nicholas De Genova","doi":"10.1177/09213740231206116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231206116","url":null,"abstract":"In the effort to critically interrogate the state (and law) and global capital (and property) through Blackness as the enduring figure of the total violence of slavery and colonialism, Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt (2022) centrally targets the Marxian critique of capitalism (or historical materialism) as the premier example of an Enlightenment conceptual apparatus that is simply “of no use.” This review rebuts Ferreira da Silva’s contentions regarding Marx and Marxian critiques. Marx identifies slavery, colonialism, genocide, and warfare as necessary foundations for the very possibility of capital accumulation, rendering the colonial and racial underpinnings of capital accumulation indispensable for any viable analysis of our contemporary sociopolitical world order. As the racialized figure of the enduring legacy of enslaved labor, then, Blackness is indeed crucial for a renewal and further radicalization of Marx’s theory of labor.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135759469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-10-15DOI: 10.1177/09213740231206106
David Austin
{"title":"Freedom time: Karl Marx and <i>unpayable debt</i>","authors":"David Austin","doi":"10.1177/09213740231206106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231206106","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary critically engages Denise Ferreira da Silva’s claim that Marxism is incapable of critically engaging the racial and capital alongside one another. It argues that, while it is true that conventional Marxists have either dismissed, undertheorized, or treated enslaved and colonial labor as ancillary to capitalist development – so-called “primitive accumulation” – rendering non-Europeans, non-proletarian laborers (and especially women of African descent) as outside the universal category of the Human, this is not necessarily representative of either Marx or Marxism. Reading Unpayable Debt alongside recent work by Lisa Lowe, Beverley Mullings, Saidiya Hartman, Nick Nesbitt, and Gary Wilder, I suggest a revisit of Marx’s and Marxist’s analysis of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism is necessary – and particularly the much-neglected work of Walter Rodney – in order to probe the constitutive dynamics of race, class, and gender as a constituent part and critique of capitalism and the struggle for human freedom.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135759115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-10-15DOI: 10.1177/09213740231206092
Tâmis Parron
{"title":"Giving dialectics a chance?","authors":"Tâmis Parron","doi":"10.1177/09213740231206092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231206092","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the Cultural Dynamics book forum on Denise Ferreira da Silva's Unpayable Debt. The book examines the epistemological principles of Western thinking that make raciality and its practical implications for the contemporary world possible. Among Ferreira da Silva’s targets is Karl Marx’s theory of value. Commentators respond to the author’s argument, with debates on whether Marx's approach sufficiently addresses the role of race within capitalism. This introduction adds to the debate wondering whether Ferreira da Silva’s framing of Marx’s ideas inadvertently mirrors the post-Enlightenment pillars she criticizes in other philosophers, suggesting a potential misunderstanding of Marx’s dialectics. The article winds up by emphasizing the significance of Marx’s dialectics as a transformative tool to critique the commodity form and its power dynamics in a racialized world economy.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135759092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
CULTURAL DYNAMICSPub Date : 2023-10-15DOI: 10.1177/09213740231206104
Beverley Best
{"title":"The commune is our payable debt","authors":"Beverley Best","doi":"10.1177/09213740231206104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740231206104","url":null,"abstract":"This essay holds a conversation with Denise Ferreira da Silva’s book, Unpayable Debt. Ferreira da Silva describes Unpayable Debt as a Black feminist reading tool that stages the onto-epistemological conditions for the unrelenting persistence of the Colonial and the Racial—modalities of power and violence—in the present, in/as global capital. A major part of the work performed by Ferreira da Silva with this reading tool is the re/de/composition of a Marxian theory of value. This work is intended to show that Marx’s analysis conceals gendered and racialized violence in the way it renders the dynamic of capitalist accumulation. In concurring with the urgency of Ferreira da Silva’s question and ensuing interrogation, I offer a different way of reading Marx’s theory of value, as a theory that illuminates how capital comes to mediate gendered and racialized subjugation, sustaining it through its dissimulation.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135759276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}