‘Scene from The American Tempest,’ Punch, January 24, 1863.

The deeply racist Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner once wrote in his 1951 novel, Requiem for a Nun, that the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past. In that same book Faulkner has the “nun,” which carries the meaning of prostitute in Shakespeare’s time, a Black drug addict named Nancy, offer that salvation comes from suffering. And though this is God’s will it’s also something of an unseen consequence of his role as Master over so many souls, like a man who’s got too many mules penned in his pasture.

All of a sudden one morning, he looks around and sees more mules than he can count at one time even, let alone find work for...when Monday morning comes, he can walk in there and hem some of them up and even catch them if he’s careful about not never turning his back on the ones he ain’t hemmed up. And that, once the gear is on them, they will do his work and do it good, only he’s still got to be careful about getting too close to them, or forgetting that another one of them is behind him, even when he is feeding them. Even when it’s Saturday noon again, and he is turning them back into the pasture, where even a mule can know it’s got until Monday morning anyway to run free in mule sin and mule pleasure. - Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner

Anyway, today we’ll share selections from past shows in order to offer perspectives on this “concentration” of mules, or if I may allegorize the allegory, a concentration of Calibans - those humans apparently not made in the image of some deity, but rather made to be used by those who do shine forth the rays of divine white conquest.

We begin with Daniel Nemser on the Infrastructures of Race interviewed by Cole Nelson. Nemser’s work focuses on how the Spanish organized colonial Mexico in the 17th century and how oddly familiar all of that still is today particularly in the large cities of the US - he calls these forms of concentration.

We mainly stay in the 17th century for the next segment which selects from Prospero’s Roaring War - and again we allegorize - here is a play that shows a world in transition from feudalism to capitalism, from alchemy to chemistry, where power and conquest shift modes but the order of beings remains the same and Caliban knows the score. Helen Scott is our guide here.

And finally, we leap into the 20th century and hear racist condescension as Malcolm X explains the meaning of X from our show on Black-Mindedness with author Michael Sawyer.

Honestly, where has 300 years gotten us? There are still concentrations of penned up people in ghettos across the nation.

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This is our Fall Fund Drive where we ask you for money to support your community radio station - it’s the only way we are able to operate - most of that operating budget comes from listeners like you. Thank you.

Today, Interchange shared segments from three episodes that aired throughout the year - they all three touched on aspects of our current moment without needing to really speak about this moment right now. We can look at the distant past, or look at the near past, and we continue to find clues to our problems...and too often these are glaringly obvious and still unheeded.