The Funambulist #59 May-June 2025 – Black Indigeneities

This issue contests the idea that the lack of sunlight characterizing the Night, means that we “see” less in darkness than we do in broad daylight. In fact, the refraction of sunlight in the Earth’s atmosphere prevents us from seeing beyond this atmospheric layer, whereas the Night allows for a much broader vision of a multitude of celestial bodies in the Universe. Seeing the night sky decenters us at the scale of individuals, and even at the planetary level—something that the 1971 Attica rebels must have intensely experienced when they dedicated parts of their nights to gaze at the stars from the courtyard of their New York State prison, as described by Orisanmi Burton in Tip of the Spear. This issue’s subtitle is also its index:
— Constellations as fundamental entities of the Hawaiian Kanaka Maoli world (D. Kauwila Mahi)
— Curfews in the townships of Cape Town during and after the Apartheid (Stephanie Briers)
— Rituals of coastal and countryside Haiti in the art of Shneider Léon Hilaire on the issue’s cover and across its pages
— Nocturnal Guerrillas at the beginning of the Algerian Revolution (Daho Djerbal)
— Sex Workers and night labor in New York City (Yin Q)
— Flares over South Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila (Mohamed Nahleh) and in the fire of a colonial house in 1947 Madagascar (Marie Ranjanoro)
— Ghosts of the Ocean off the coast of Dakar as suggested by Mati Diop‘s Atlantics
— Northern Lights playing games over the heads of children in Inuit Nunaat (Krista Ulujuk Zawadski)