Cultural Critique

Abstract

Cultural Critique Cesare Casarino, Maggie Hennefeld, John Mowitt, and Simona Sawhney In the dark times, will there also be singing?Yes, there will also be singing, about the dark times. —Bertolt Brecht When in her Lessing Prize speech Hannah Arendt recycled Brecht's figure of "dark times" she was not thinking of the COVID-19 pandemic that has been ravaging "humanity" since the spring of 2019. How could she? We, however, cannot help but think of it. It has imposed a new darkness on our times. As Brecht predicted, there has been singing and, as always, it has taken many forms: global protests against environmental destruction, pandemic racism, and corporate autocracy, for example. For the senior editorial team at Cultural Critique the singing has taken collegial form. In fall of this year we welcomed a new senior editor to the journal, Professor Frieda Ekotto, a "song" whose qualities resemble those that hover over and between Yaoundé, Fort de France, and New Orleans. Frieda, who will serve as president of the Modern Language Association in 2023, comes to us from the University of Michigan where she is professor of Afroamerican and African Literature, Francophone Studies, and Comparative Literature. She is the author of a dozen books, including Race and Sex across the French Atlantic: The Color of Black in Literary, Philosophical, and Theater Discourse (2011), Don't Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella, which was translated by Corine Tachtiris (2019). She is the coeditor of Rethinking African Cultural Production (2015) and Rethinking Third Cinema: The Role of Anti-colonial Media and Aesthetics in Postmodernity (2009). She has appeared in a documentary on the Hmong communities in the U.S. and is the producer of two feature films. Other forms of "illumination" are in hand. [End Page vii] Long ago Frieda completed a doctorate at Minnesota, so in a sense she is circling back through home. We have heard her approaching and are thrilled to be here to greet her. Bienvenue, Frieda. [End Page viii] Cesare Casarino, Maggie Hennefeld, John Mowitt, and Simona Sawhney The Senior Editorial Group Copyright © 2022 Regents of the University of Minnesota