On Anti-Authoritarian Uprisings in Bangladesh, and the Twin Devils of Debt and Work
Writing in Jamhoor just days after student protests first erupted in Bangladesh—and without the foresight they would succeed in ousting the ruling party, BISR faculty Nafis Hasan celebrates the “indomitable force” of student power and the role it has played in Bangladeshi history since 1947.
Then, in The Nation, BISR faculty Sophie Lewis reviews Molly McGhee’s 2023 surrealist workplace novel Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, in which Jonathan, the protagonist, tackles his immense student debt load as a ‘dream auditor,’ tasked with entering the dreamscapes of members of the professional class in order to cast away their anxieties about work. As he rises in the pecking order, his debt becomes more financially manageable; but with more stake in the office hierarchy, he turns against solidarity efforts, and visits cruelty upon workers in his prior positions. The increasingly pathological relationships we have with our jobs—Lewis and McGhee both insist, is not our fault: “The violent couplet of debt and work,” McGhee suggests, “makes thing-like monsters of us.”