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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Imagine the 80s: those were the days of high theory and cold hearts, graduate students drunk on fantasies of intellectual stardom, ardent talk of master narratives and intertextuality. I returned to Toronto after a hard year in North Africa and was lost in high theory, trying to understand the difference between consent and coercion and make sense of colonial histories. The city seemed metallic, filled with certainties, both theoretical and cultural.

