Bad things happen in the desert: mapping security regimes in the West African Sahel and the ‘problem’ of arid spaces

The cene scene: Who gets to theorize global time and how do we center indigenous and black futurities?

“…We take seriously Saldanha's (2020: 16) observation that the Anthropocene has potential to build fruitful alliances across social and physical sciences and also acknowledge his point that "it cannot be favorable to those in power if they can be shown to be maintaining a trajectory possibly leading, if not to the extinction of humans, at least to massive deprivation and uncertainty." Anemic theorizations result in technocratic solutions, legacies of Malthusian scarcity and eugenics, and underwrite new security measures that replicate old patterns of violence (Ahuja, 2015;Hartmann, 2014;Meché, 2019). We see this in how the Colorado River is understood only in its recent history, from the moment of colonization onward, ignoring Indigenous temporalities or histories with the river.…”

Memories of an Imperial City: Race, Gender, and Birmingham, Alabama

“…I was struck by this unexpected appearance of Rice amid a celebration of pan‐African visual art. Her tenure as a senior Bush Administration official coincided with the rapid militarisation of US foreign policy towards Africa, through the creation of the Department of Defense’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the expansion of the GWOT in West Africa (Meché ). Not far from the exhibit hall—but perhaps beyond the purview of an official Afropolitan sensibility (Adeniyi Ogunyankin )—one can observe another kind of pan‐African art on display: graffiti etched under a highway overpass approximating a Black Power‐era Angela Davis (see Figure ).…”

Livingstone’s Last Stand: The End of Development As We Know It?

“…In the age of terror, pandemic, and mass migration, the task of containing the fallout from undeveloped economies and failing states is now being shouldered—for example, in places like the Sahel—by US and European (in this case, French) security forces. Here they are devising novel forms of weaponized development and infrastructural provision in contexts where poverty and social breakdown are held to pose a global threat (Meché, 2020). At the same time, it seems increasingly evident that more altruistic modes of philanthropy have become unpalatable in times of austerity and national self-protection.…”