Fiction non fiction : volume 1

Fiction Non Fiction is a series of readers edited by Bruno Zhu, pairing voices engaged in literary criticism with the material histories of labour, gender, and race. Each volume proposes a close-reading of fictitious and theoretical works to understand how identity politics have been narrativised by liberal institutions across space and time.

Volume I, published on the occasion of License to Live, Bruno Zhu’s commission at Chisenhale Gallery, London, reflects specifically on notions of space. Spanning Martinique and colonial Algeria, Jamaican plantations and 1970s Lisbon, by way of a Shakespearian play and a late-18th century Atlantic autobiography, this collection traces the effects of colonial projects that still serve extractive forces today.

Featuring texts by Brenna Bhandar & Alberto Toscano, Celia Britton, Muriam Haleh Davis, Silvia Federici, Paul Gilroy, Lisa Lowe, Luís Madureira, and Sylvia Wynter, Volume I observes racially coded spaces and their proficiency in arranging bodies, ideas, and citizens according to the interests of the Empire. (bron: website Chisenhale Gallery)