Sarah Nuttall, Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, is editor and author of numerous publications. She is editor of Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics (Duke UP, 2006). And, she is co-editor of Text, Theory, Space: Land, Literature and History in South Africa and Australia (Routledge, 1996); Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (OUP, 1998); Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies (OUP, 2000); Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (Public Culture special Issue, October 2004); and author of a forthcoming volume of essays on South African Literatures. On April 18 she participated in a roundtable discussion on politics in contemporary South Africa, and she also delivered a public lecture entitled “A Politics of Entanglement: Being in Johannesburg” that examined questions concerning race, gender, and commodification in contemporary South Africa.
Achille Mbembe is Research Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and Senior Researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. He has published widely on African history and politics. He is author of La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (Paris, Karthala, 1996); On the Postcolony (California UP, 2001); and he is co-editor of Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (Public Culture special issue, October 2004).