Funambulist #30 Reparations

Welcome to the 30th issue of The Funambulist! With it, we’re finishing our fifth year of publishing the magazine — and what a time to do so, amidst the global Black Lives Matter uprising! We hope that this issue dedicated to the question of Reparations can contribute in a humble way to the extremely rich conversations about strategies to adopt in the international(ist) front against settler colonialism and anti-Blackness. This issue proposes several perspectives on reparations envisioned as a response to the sustained effects of colonial slavery (Cases Rebelles), settler colonialism (Amy McQuire, Edward Halealoha Ayau, Zoé Samudzi, Tshepo Madlingozi, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay), racial and ecocidal capitalism (Linda Quiquivix), as well as structural racism in relation to the police (Patricia Nguyen) and housing (Colin Prescod). Regardless of their stance on whether the concept of reparations is a politically productive one or not, these perspectives all consider reparative models coming from the colonial state as a means for it to strengthen itself despite a simulacrum of humility and introspection. As usual, our News from the Fronts section that opens each issue and complements the main dossier, includes articles reflecting on ongoing struggles. In this issue, we cover the history of Black music under South African Apartheid (Atiyyah Khan) and the Indigenous struggle of Nubians north of the 22nd Parallel (Menna Agha).