Author Archives: An Hoang-Xuan

In her book Saving animals: multispecies ecologies of rescue and care, Elan draws a very empathetic and insightful picture of the conditions of life under which animals in the US live, their current status and the way they are represented. I appreciated the nuanced … Continue reading →

In her book Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty, Lara articulates a number of meaningfully charged concepts like Blackness, queerness and Black sovereignty in the hope to see emerge the “wholeness” of which “arrivant” populations were deprived under the yoke of what she calls … Continue reading →

Siri Suh thoroughly documents what she calls “reproductive governance” in three different hospitals in Senegal. She links this phenomenon and PAC (Post-Abortion-Care) practices to the Foucauldian concept of biopower that is to say, the practice of modern nation states and … Continue reading →

I was struck by the forced duality of midwifery in Mexico between working with the state and against it and its abusive practices. As demonstrated in the introduction and more particularly in chapter 3, this position places them in a delicate in-betweenness: people … Continue reading →

I was particularly struck by the author’s conceptualization of Blackness as a “place” that can be geographically defined but also situated in time. On page 14 she writes that “Blackness is perpetually out of place and constantly running out of time.” She very poetically describes … Continue reading →

I was very much surprised at the playfulness and diversity of Bernard’s exercises, although I do have to say maths aren’t my strongest suit. I particularly enjoyed his explanation of what cultural domain analysis is, and the example he uses. I had already … Continue reading →

Reading and annotating Murchinson’s chapters made me realise how much my own research projects need refining. I found myself trying to check all the boxes (find a topic that needs to be studied, that contributes to a larger body of knowledge … Continue reading →

What fascinated me in this text is the representation of mushrooms as a Janus-faced entity: one the one hand, the mushroom reveals the putative truth of human condition as precarious, and on the other, presents itself as one example of salvation through … Continue reading →