These Dark Skies: Reckoning with Identity, Violence, and Power from Abroad

Description

In These Dark Skies, Arianne Zwartjes interweaves the experience of living in the southern Netherlands—with her wife, who is Russian—and the unfolding of both the refugee crisis across Europe and the uptick in terrorist acts in France, Greece, Austria, Germany, and the Balkans. She probes her own subjectivity, as a white American, as a queer woman in a transcultural marriage, as a writer, and as a witness. The essays investigate and meditate on a broad array of related topics, including drone strikes, tear gas, and military intervention; the sugar trade, the Dutch blackface celebration of Zwarte Piet, and constructions of whiteness in Europe and the U.S.; and visual arts of Russian avant-garde painters, an Iraqi choreographer living in Belgium, and German choreographer Pina Bausch. This is a lyrical, timely book deeply salient to the political moment we continue to find ourselves in: a moment of incredible anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiment, a moment of xenophobic and misogynistic violence.   Contents Prologue Chapter One. Choreographies Chapter Two. A Wild Blossoming Red Chapter Three. The Bent of Light Chapter Four. Notes on Bewilderment Chapter Five. Cities of Broken Teeth, Cities of Dust and Blood Chapter Six. The Psychology of Violence Chapter Seven. Blood Sugar Chapter Eight. Strangers in the Village Chapter Nine. A World Without Lines Chapter Ten. Seeking Refuge Chapter Eleven. American Innocence Chapter Twelve. Black Squares and Summer Storms Chapter Thirteen. Radical Hope Notes Acknowledgments