Pyriscence

Pyriscence stands in solidarity with anti-carceral groups: Defund-Dismantle-Build. Please read, sign, and share. #Abolition #FreeThemAll

Part of how Canadians define themselves is in opposition to America, particularly when it comes to policing and white-supremacist violence. To dispel the myth that racist policing is something that happens over there, we are sharing this list compiled by journalist and activist Desmond Cole of Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour killed by Canadian police.

RK Jxn's "Spring in Golgotha: A Corona Catechism in Three Parts" is a beautiful exploration of the seasons and cyclicality, and the terminal spring of Corona. It is a call to denaturalize dominant narrativizations of history--to imagine differently and build anew. "I find myself returning to the first movement of the Easter story, before the redemptive moment: the place of skulls. I wonder what I might learn sitting with the historical reality of cruelty and betrayal. Before revelling in the stigmatic miracleor the miracle curewhat will our analyses and our bodies teach us about grief, normalcy, and the cruel optimism of faith in a moment of crisis?"

We have put together this list in the early days of the pandemic to help us think together and support each other during this time. We have not compiled sources on the science of the virus as there are better places to find that information. We will be updating it as more information becomes available, and please send us an email ([email protected]) if you come across anything that would be useful. The only way we will get through this is together.... In love and solidarity, Sean O'Brien, Beth Capper, and Shama Rangwala

Happy Black History Month! Bashir Mohamed takes a dive into the Edmonton Journal archives to look into media representations of Black sex workers in Edmonton in the early 1900s.

Please check out my article on #TheHandmaidsTale TV adaptation as a white liberal fantasy that fundamentally misunderstands liberalism and fascism as opposites.... "The Handmaid’s Tale shows how liberal culture works through co-optation and erasure. The Handmaid’s Tale illuminatesthrough the good liberal intentions of the showrunners and the anti-Black logic of the showthe way in which liberals are making sense of the decline of liberalism and the rise of fascism. The Handmaid’s Tale reveals the liberal mechanism of simultaneously lamenting the violence of white supremacy and shoring it up by making the oppressed people white." Thanks to Sarah Kessler for inviting me and to the editorial team at Public Books!

In the second piece of our "Working Hard, Hardly Working" series, QC Gu reflects on Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008): "Set in the western Chinese metropolis of Chengdu, 24 City is a collection of interviews, some real and some fictional, that document the lives of workers in the 420 Factory. This factory, we find out, is a former state-owned enterprise that has been privatised under Chinese neoliberalisation. The owners have sold the land on which the factory sits to make way for... '24 City,' a sprawling commercial real-estate development. Throughout the film, scenes of the factory in varying states of demolition punctuate intimate interviews with multiple generations of workers and their children." https://www.pyriscence.ca/home/24city The film will be screening this Thursday, Dec. 12, 7pm, at Metro Cinema. For more information on the series: https://www.metrocinema.org/se/working-hard-hardly-working/