Boston Review Magazine March-April 2015 Back Issue

From Ferguson and Paris to Chapel Hill and Copenhagen, recent radical and religious violence has sparked fierce public debate about the nature of victimhood and social inquiry and the appropriate response, whether militant resistance or ameliorative repair. This issue also features new poems from Jorie Graham and Yusef Komunyakaa.

In the forum, anthropologist John Bowen explores decades-long social tensions in France and considers ways in which the state marginalized Muslims and helped to breed radicalization. Some respondents argue that Bowen underestimates the depth of social divisions. Another applauds Bowen’s sense of justice but argues that he misreads the casual relationship between oppression and violence.

Jessa Crispin takes up the pervasive social injury of women. While she acknowledges the fact of it, she questions the Internet campaign #yesallwomen and a developing women’s literature, which suggest that certain kinds of harm are the territory of women alone—that pain itself is gendered.

Elsewhere, Randall Kennedy criticizes recent revisionist histories of black power radicals—Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey Newton. The revisionists, Kennedy argues, elevate dubious heroes.

Finally, in his column on how politically correct speech limits debate, Claude Fischer echoes Crispin’s warning about the danger of treating groups as fragile victims—a strategy that fosters supplication in place of determined political action.