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Minced English
A catalog of a catalog, an index of an index, Minced English inventories twenty-nine terms for people of mixed race from the Oxford English Dictionary. The book is an archive of language as data as well as a record of obsession.
"While Hanafi’s presentation of these words is cold and detached (she is after all nothing more than a list maker, a collage artist, an organizer), the momentum of each page speaks for itself, depicting both the color, imagination and violence that categorical words are capable of. The sentences speak from a variety of different time periods; some of them are old-timey, sounding like they come from newspapers of old America, or the notes of conquistadors, still others seem lifted from rap videos or contemporary speech. Hanafi’s detachment presents all of these with seeming remote aestheticism, as to create an arc of political realization: that a dominant culture created these categories and that the application of those categories is its own subjugation." Caroline Picard, The Green Lantern Press: A Public Notebook
"While Hanafi’s presentation of these words is cold and detached (she is after all nothing more than a list maker, a collage artist, an organizer), the momentum of each page speaks for itself, depicting both the color, imagination and violence that categorical words are capable of. The sentences speak from a variety of different time periods; some of them are old-timey, sounding like they come from newspapers of old America, or the notes of conquistadors, still others seem lifted from rap videos or contemporary speech. Hanafi’s detachment presents all of these with seeming remote aestheticism, as to create an arc of political realization: that a dominant culture created these categories and that the application of those categories is its own subjugation." Caroline Picard, The Green Lantern Press: A Public Notebook
81 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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January 28, 2014You can now download a free PDF of Minced English at www.amiraha.com.
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