On the occasion of our transition to Duke University Press, we, the current Qui Parle Editorial Board, write this statement across the last days of 2016, a year concluding with looming political uncertainty and social fragility. Such a situating exercise—a mission statement, a manifesto, an apology—easily lends itself to the overestimation of any present moment and its particular gravity, effectively isolating it. Here, instead, we write this statement as if drawing a line in the sand—one for stepping over creatively, not for lingering before, as the movement of critique demonstrates: out of crisis, critique, back again, and so forth.
Making this move in the face of the current resurgence and consolidation of white heteropatriarchal nationalism calls us to reflect on the role of a journal such as Qui Parle amid antiracist, ecological, pro-LGBTQ+, feminist, and promigrant struggles. What can a journal of critical theory do in such times? Who speaks...
