Dear reader,
In 1963, James Baldwin shared in an interview that he was “terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart.” Although Baldwin was specifically speaking of the legacy of racial segregation in the United States, his words began circulating again with newfound relevance in October 2023. The world is witnessing a genocide against Palestinian people, and we at RevUU are writing the introduction to the issue you’re currently reading. It feels impossible not to comment on this matter.
While we recognize that the colonial occupation of Palestine has been ongoing for 75 years, and the ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians from Israel for many decades, the current genocidal campaign in Gaza is particularly violent. At the time of writing, over 11,000 deaths have been reported across last month. Therefore, we have decided to situate the Autumn Issue of RevUU 2023, a magazine that aims to “highlight new, critical voices,” in empathic opposition to apathy. After all, silence and a ‘neutral’ stance on Israeli settler colonialism results in complicity with the oppressor.
As a publication within Utrecht University, RevUU joins Utrecht in Solidarity with Palestine and Dutch Scholars for Palestine as they challenge the supposed ‘neutrality’ of academic institutions in the Netherlands. After more than two weeks of silence, Utrecht University released a statement claiming that they “are a university, not a political institute” and thus will not take sides in this “conflict” (language that forgets power relations need to be (somewhat) equally distributed in order for something to classify as a conflict). Considering that Utrecht University maintains its affiliations with Israeli academic institutions, this neutrality is questionable.
Moreover, Utrecht University is undeniably political. From its colonial legacy – which is brilliantly outlined in the walking tour by Sporen van Slavernij in Utrecht – to unresolved issues of gender, class, race, and (dis)ability that continue to determine who gets to be a student and/or staff member in the university, politics lie at the heart of this particular institution as well as knowledge production and circulation in general. The mere question of what counts as ‘research’ (and subsequently receives funding) is political.
The university’s initial silence and subsequent refusal to condemn colonial occupation is concerning. It reflects the overall apathy that we fear permeates the Netherlands and Europe more generally. Toward the end of October, the Netherlands abstained from the UN non-binding resolution calling for a ceasefire. Abstention is apathy. As a journal that publishes critical thinking, we speak out against apathy when our university and government refuses to do so, and, in a nod to Baldwin, call for a resuscitating of the heart.
Initially, we planned for the theme of this issue to be the (de)construction of ‘Identity’. But as we started witnessing the horrors of this major historical event and, to a certain extent, the glimmer of hope that solidarity brings, we decided to change our theme accordingly. It feels violent to have (any) platform but to ignore the ongoing displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people.
Further, a theme as equivocal and broad as identity runs the risk of being apathetic in itself. Is part of what drives this ‘conflict’ the refusal of people to think critically and to step outside of pre-determined, oppressive identity categories? ‘Identity’ would fail to capture the passion, devotion, and faith in literature’s capacity to do something to and for the world that are inherent to all the reviews that are part of this issue – and that go beyond simply representing identity. At RevUU, we publish criticism in the first place because we care. And all of our reviewers care both capaciously and complexly, which becomes apparent in the meaningful and engaged positions taken up in their work.
We decided to start this issue off with what we call the ‘RevUU Book Club’ section. This section features three different reviews on R.F. Kuang’s controversial novel Yellowface. While these reviews engage with the same work, they explore different and sometimes even contradictory facets of it. After our Book Club, the other reviews are listed alphabetically by the reviewers’ names. These reviews span a wide selection of novels published in the past year. Our publication process demonstrates a politics of care, as each review has received multiple rounds of collective feedback. At RevUU, we have steered our reviews toward publication together, as a community.
We – as editors-in-chief – would like to thank every member of our team for their hard work and valuable contributions. We would also like to thank Mia You for her guidance and support in shaping this edition.
We hope you will gain insights and discover new work while reading our reviews. Most of all, we hope you will feel with or because of our work. Let the passion within our reviews coarse through your own body and move it toward action. There is no apathy at RevUU.
RevUU 