In her new book, Imperfect Solidarities, art critic Aruna D'Souza argues that empathy or an emotional bond is an “imperfect ground” for solidarity. In its stead she foregrounds the more difficult work of care that is necessary to achieve justice. This obligation to care allows us to “sit with the unknowability of the other and still care for and with them, without translating ourselves into their terms” (81). D'Souza's call is a good place to begin reflecting on the essays presented in this issue, which are focused on historical hurts that haunt us to this day and the political projects of exclusion and exclusivity that are at the heart of our contemporary world order. In each of these essays we find the persistence of colonialism both as a process that brings social groups together in uneasy social proximity and one that introduces the ethno-political fissures on which contemporary nation-states...
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