Issue Ten
DECEMBER 2025
Black on white, with a glint of copper. And inside: the Mediterranean as a sea between; dreams, and their political life; headaches — human, divine, and artificial. A woman steps in Tangiers; looted libraries whisper their afterlives; strangers write to strangers. What Sweden isn’t; Yugoslav tales of literary theft ascending; an angel is saved — or not — in a broken geography. Eight hours that don’t make a day, and the question of what the West means to the rest.
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The West’s West and the rest’s West
« To see the West as a process means that France was at one time westernized. Rome was westernized. Greece was westernized »
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Saving the angel
« This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. »
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On being plagiarized
« To write a biography about a writer like Kiš is a violation of the poetics of the very author it claims to revere. »
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What Sweden is, not
« Once the most social democratic country in Europe, and then, in the 1990s, the most neoliberal one, Sweden now aims to become the most nationalist one. »
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The Passion of strangers: a philosophy of friendship
Translated from the Catalan into English by Julie Wark A bond of free laws Friendship is the emotional bond that exists between people who are not united by other relationships — family, workplace, neighborly, nationality, and others — or subject to any of their purposes. Although it can be part of any of these spheres, […]
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« Friendship is revolutionary » — Interview with Marina Garcés
« I think reimagining relationships of distance and proximity is interesting in order to go beyond romantic ideas of neighbors. »
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Looted libraries
« In both countries, it has left the government officials grappling with an extremely delicate and complex issue. Why is it so difficult to move forward? »
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A woman in Tangiers: against erasure
« I detect the head of a mannequin. Then the grains get too coarse. »
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The political life of dreams
« Dreams could show an internalization of oppression just as easily as a resistance to oppression — which would mean a dream isn’t so free a realm after all. »
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A letter from
« Even if you feel at home in time and space today, you know that you are already in mourning for the future loss of everything that is beautiful. This is the first time humanity is mourning in the future tense. »
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Can AI have a headache?
« This summer my inner warrior was kissed back alive by an unlikely figure: the Pope. »
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The sea between
« In order to survive amidst this bleak existence, the Mediterranean people established two distinct strategies: hopelessness or salvation. Some embraced hopelessness as the best way to approach the absurd condition of human life. »