CALL FOR PAPER 8.0: WAYS OF STRUCTURING
If structures are determinate and determining, as they have come to seem through the interventions of poststructuralist theory, then ‘ways of structuring’ names a contradiction. The plurality of ‘ways’ sits in tension with the fixity of ‘structure,’ evoking the very qualities of contingency and flexibility that the concept seems to negate.
Art’s autonomy from structure, and for structuring—using forms of repetition, completion, and interruption—negotiates relations between the subject and structure, or between the subjective and the objective. What can come of these relations? For Angela Davis, “the tension between the subjective and the objective will eventually provide the impetus towards total liberation” (9), where a way of structuring invites the struggle of contradiction in labour and mediation. In other words, structure demands our participation. How then might we position ourselves in relation to structure, and how is this relation mediated by aesthetic forms?
For its ninth issue, Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis invites (young) researchers, (established) scholars, and creatives alike to submit works that consider practices, experiences, and methodologies that engage with the struggle, tension and hopeful inventiveness of structure. How does structure’s constitutive contradiction come to be figured? How are the general and the particular formalised? And how can the various hyphenations of structure (de-, re-, etc.) direct us in thinking of structure’s paradoxical faculty—between inescapability and perpetual transformation?
Find all the details and information via the link in bio.
The Soapbox Online Journal is always open for submissions! Our digital platform accepts submissions of a variety of formats all year round. We look for engaging, original work—written, visual or auditory—on a variety of cultural topics, whether of an academic or more experimental nature. Ultimately, our online platform intends to showcase the development of ideas traditionally explored in academia in order to apply and translate these to more approachable forms and styles.
You can submit your work by sending an email to [email protected]
You can find the submission guidelines and all additional details on contributions on our website - linked in our bio.
“Playing with (In)visibility: Surveillance as Narrative Construction” by Betsy McGrath is now online on our web journal! 📝
“The luminescent glow of grainy CCTV footage recalls an aesthetic reproduced across news bulletins, crime dramas, and—for a contemporary audience—social media. When faced with this visual schema, the viewer’s suspicions are raised. Evidence Locker invites its audience to grab the CCTV footage and turn it over, ransacking the image until it reveals to us a truth we have already come to anticipate. The chase is on—until finally, the woman in red climbs onto the back of a motorbike and slips away, vanishing into the dark, beyond the camera’s gaze. Magid is only toying with us: there is no crime, only the suspicious gaze of the camera, and now us. Guilty.”
You can read the full text on our website. 🤳
Image credits: Evidence Locker. Control Room (video still). Digital video. 7:14 min. 2004
New (Un)box the Soap episode! 🌟
In this episode, we sit down with Aileen Ye (@aileen__yxz ) a filmmaker, writer and curator based in The Netherlands. Aileen’s practice explores contemporary subcultures and the body as a site of resistance. We discuss the power of movement, from diasporic club culture, to re-connecting with the land, and having dance parties in your bedroom. How does the body hold memory, rhythm and refusal?
Aileen shares how she approaches filmmaking as a method of reframing the archive, challenging visual hierarchies, and experimenting with new visual and sonic languages. Throughout, we explore the importance of community, what it means to centre joy and hope, and how inspiration exists in our everyday worlds.
This episode is the first in a new series exploring the themes of our forthcoming seventh issue: Between Bodies and Homes!
Interview by @fernchettle
Stills from: Midnight Rising (2024) and How to Dance (2026) by Aileen Ye
We’re so happy to announce that our most recent issue On the Uses of Absence has been selected for the Best Dutch Book Designs 2025!!💜📖
The book was designed by Alice Machado (@ruim_ ) and Paolo Barbieri (@ppablo._ ) and will be on display at the Stedelijk this fall!
Copies are still available on our website - link in bio.
Next Friday we’ll be attending the Mycelium Magazine launch event by the UvA Green Office, which explores forms of connection, entanglement and interdisciplinarity. We’ll be there selling copies of our publications, come by! 🌱📖
New podcast episode! 🪡🪡🪡🪡
In this episode of Unbox the Soap, the second installment of our series on the politics of textiles, our hosts sit down to interview Dr. Zay Dale - Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas and Soapbox web author - to discuss his ongoing research into the politics of textiles in American slave narratives.
Our conversation traces the complex relationship between material history and Black existence, from the subversive storytelling of Olaudah Equiano and Harriet Jacobs to the practices of contemporary artists like Kara Walker, Kiyan Williams, and Precious Lovell. Drawing from his 2024 article in the ASAP Review (“Ethereal Fabric: Exploring Textiles and Black Existence in America”), Zay explains how fabrics such as osnaburg, cotton, and wool historically functioned as both tools of dehumanization and sites of radical resistance, providing insights into the “aesthetic vocabulary” of Black survival, as well as the ongoing importance of witnessing these historical gestures from the present.
Zay’s recent article “Black Flesh and the Refusal of Capture” is available to read on our website!
Interview by @shane_far20@ajuliawinter
Image Credit: Created by an unidentified woman or women; petticoat attributed to an enslaved seamstress known as Old Aunt Sarah, ca. 1840. American. Collection of the Old Slave Mart Museum (founded 1937). Public domain. Image reproduced from Dr. Zay Dale’s article in ASAP Review.
Thank you to everyone who joined us on Valentine’s Day in celebration of love and absence. What a lovely evening it was! 💌
Special thanks to all the wonderful performers and to @ventilator_cinema for hosting us!
If you didn’t get the chance to purchase your own copy of On the Uses of Absence you can still do so on our website - link in bio.
🖋️ Printed Matters | Essay Editing Workshop
Want to learn more about editing academic essays? Curious about the behind-the-scenes processes of an academic journal?
Join us on Monday, February 23 and get advice on how to edit academic texts from Soapbox Journal. Bring excerpts from your own texts (up to 1,000 words).
🖋️ About Soapbox
Soapbox is an independent, open-access, student-run publishing platform, operating both in print as a peer-reviewed journal and online.
📅 Monday, 23 February 2026
🕒 17.00 - 19.00
📍VOX-POP
🎟️ Free of charge — registration required (via link in bio)!
Here is the full program for our Valentine’s Day evening dedicated to our most recent issue On the Uses of Absence 💜
Tickets are now on sale - link in our bio.
🎞️ We will start the evening off with a cozy screening of a short film, Assenza - quello che c’è (dir. Emanuela D’Antonio), that explores complexities of absence in familial relations, followed by a collective discussion.
💌 Merging absence and love together, we will learn how to write a love letter from Gabbi Lieve. After a short introduction on how to approach expressing your love via the written word, you are welcome to create your letter at any point during the evening at the special station with everything necessary.
💗 In the second part of the evening, we want to invite you to take the stage, and sway the audience with a fascinating story, a comedy sketch, or a poetic rendition of your own writing in Soapbox’s first open mic. The form and tone are up to you, the only objective is absence (and love, if you please).
If you wish to take part in the open mic, send us an email at [email protected] or DM us on Instagram with your name/name you would like to be presented with, and what you intend to present.
🎙️ We will wrap the evening up with three live music performances! We will start by an ambient poetic session from Concrete Yard, a duo that will linger a little longer on the words that were spoken and don’t quite want to leave yet. Then, we will drift in the slowness of Pajja’s live rendition of his album ‘altering’, drowning in the ambience of sound. We will close the evening with a cozy performance from Gabbi Lieve whose guitar will weave together themes of absence and love.
We hope to see you there! ❤️
