Decay

In thirteen sharp essays, the contributors to Decay attend to the processes and experiences of symbolic and material decay in a variety of sociopolitical contexts across the globe. They examine decay in its myriad manifestations--biological, physical, organizational, moral, political, personal, and social--and in its numerous contexts--colonialism and imperialism, governments and the state, racism, the environment, and infrastructure. The volume's topics are wide in scope, ranging from the discourse of social decay in contemporary Australian settler colonialism and the ways infrastructures both create and experience decay to cultural decay in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war and the relations between individual, institutional, and societal decay in an American high security prison. By using decay as a problematic and expounding its mechanisms, conditions, and temporalities, the contributors provide a nuanced and rigorous way to more fully grapple with the exigencies of the current sociopolitical moment.

Contributors. Cameo Dalley, Peter Dwyer, Akhil Gupta, Ghassan Hage, Michael Herzfeld, Elise Klein, Bart Klem, Tamara Kohn, Debra McDougall, Michael Main, Fabio Mattioli, Monica Minnegal, Violeta Schubert