The Funambulist #50 Redefining Our Terms

Welcome to the 50th issue of The Funambulist. For the very first time, the magazine is published both in its original anglophone version and a brand new francophone edition. As such, it is not innocent that this issue tackles the question of language.
The achievements of a generation of activists and politically committed intellectuals to have our (anticolonial, antiracist, queer, feminist, etc.) nomenclature surge into public imaginaries, has led to a dilution of this vocabulary’s political meanings. Each contribution of this issue thus proposes a subjective definition of a such a term, the issue acting like a useful glossary to reflect on our struggles. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Sabrien Amrov write to each other about the term Indigenous, while Mohammed Elnaiem and Cases Rebelles have a similar conversation around Blackness. Rana Issa delivers a personal account of the three main terms of the Palestinian struggle for liberation: Nakba, Intifada, and Sumud. Petrus Liu affirms that Queer is of and from the Global South. Panashe Chigumadzi re-politicize Ubuntu to demand reparations in southern Africa. Zoé Samudzi reflects on the thresholds that allow for state violence to be designated as Genocide. Verónica Gago proposes a Latin American feminist understanding of Violence while Sergio Calderón Harker invokes a similar pantheon of Abya Yala thinkers to strengthen the term Decolonial. Mathieu Rigouste defines Banlieues and Quartiers Populaires as key notions of the fight against the spatialized structural racism in France. Finally, Maïa Tellit Hawad offers us a beautiful account on the poetic and artistic work of her father, Hawad and his Furigraphies visible on the issue’s cover and in its pages.
This issue only contains one news from the fronts: a textual and cartographic account of the Azeri settler colonization of Armenian Artsakh by Melsida Babayan.