New Formations Volume 2022 Issue 106

ISSN 0950-2378

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At History's Edge

This issue brings together a diverse range of contributions, all in different ways exploring the edges and limits of some specific form of contemporary experience: the imagined originary location of ‘western’ culture, the supposedly-separate realms of work and leisure, the permeable borders of countries and nations, the limits and lineaments of public memories. In their monumental essay, Iain Chambers and Marta Cariello interrogate the legacy of representations of European imaginings of the Mediterranean. Insisting on ‘a politics of registration and listening’, they ask us to consider how a more exposed, heterogeneous and turbulent conception of the Mediterranean might change how we think about the Balkans. Remaining in the Balkans, Neda Genova analyses a series of material and semiotic modifications to the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, exploring surfaces as both spatial and temporal objects, engaged in the production of continuity and rupture. This issue also contains two timely articles looking at the role of art and visual representation in debates around migration and categories of inclusion and exclusion. Jane Lydon examines how First Nations people and refugees are depicted in the public sphere in Australia, arguing that perspectives on citizenship and semi-porous borders must be understood within a history of nation-building. Meanwhile, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald discusses Libidinal Circuits, a significant art exhibition in Liverpool, which she situates within a body of critical artworks that address the experiences of migration in thoughtful, committed and affecting ways. Our final two contributions explore symptoms of life in the age of advanced digital capitalism. Diane Negra and Suzanne Leonard track the emergence of sleep discourse in the past ten years in the USA, examining how the ‘sleep crisis’ has been leveraged to intensify neoliberal brutalities. In a complementary vein, Emma Harrison explores the politics of work and the digital mundane, via an ethnographic study at a North American ‘digital detox’retreat

Contents

Editorial, pages 4‑5
Jeremy Gilbert Free to download

At History’s Edge: The Mediterranean Question, pages 6‑24
Iain Chambers, Marta Cariello Free to download

Temporal Politics of the Surface: Keeping Pace with the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, pages 25‑43
Neda Genova

Labour, Self-Care and Respite: Neoliberal Rationalities in Sleep Crisis Rhetoric, pages 43‑59
Diane Negra, Suzanne Leonard

In the Digital World, We Work; At Camp, We Play, pages 60‑78
Emma Harrison

Under My Skin: Critical Art and Its Impact, pages 79‑99
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

An Australian Politics of Indistinction: Making Refugees Visible, pages 100‑117
Jane Lydon Free to download

Review: Peripheral Aesthetics, pages 118‑120
Shakti Jaising Free to download