Debris magazine on the power of ‘No!’
The latest issue of Debris magazine opens its editorial on an uncompromisingly negative note: “It’s the time of no. No war, no genocide, no corporatism, no big business, no oligarchies, no neo-feudalism, no rapacious plunder of land, no capitulation, no phone, no imperialism, no capital, no future.”
We delivered the magazine to Stack subscribers in January, and I was excited to speak with editors Cher Tan and Jon Tjhia, and founder Julia Flaster, to find out more about their intention with the issue. Because while the magazine is based around the most negative word in the English language, it’s presented in a distinctly positive way. Or as Cher puts it in the podcast episiode above, “No could possibly mean yes to something else”.
On the pages of the magazine that “something else” takes many forms. There’s a brilliant report from the world’s oldest oil wrestling tournament, which the author attends and longs for the homoeroticism that has been banished by the Turkish government. There’s a touching story about a woman who finds herself back in the village where she grew up, choosing to remain there as war breaks out around her because she prefers it to the “cold rooms” of the diaspora, where she never felt she belonged. And there’s a funny and frustrated poem by an autistic poet who just wants everyone to stop asking him if he thinks they’re autistic.
A combative spirit runs through this issue of Debris magazine, and it uses ‘No!’ as a way of asking readers to engage with what they would say yes to. “It’s not enough to just scroll and look at a screen and say, ‘Yeah, that’s shit… That’s bad. Things are bad.'” Jon explains. “We know things are bad. We are very much interested in the micro ingenuities and the necessary inventions of this social context… To understand those nos and metabolize them into something that is creative and that can envisage a path forward and remedy those nos.”
I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation. If you haven’t seen the magazine yet, you can buy copies in the Stack shop, and while you’re there, sign up for our subscription and we’ll deliver a different independent magazine to your door every month. Or if you’re not ready for that yet, follow us on Spotify or YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, and we’ll be able to deliver all our new episodes to you as soon as they’re ready.
