DIFFUSING

<p>This ninth SDUK broadsheet openly engages the nineteenth-century society from which the series takes its name, by considering <strong>DIFFUSING</strong>: how circulation, dissemination, opacity, transparency, and anonymity shape the way knowledges, materials, and media are transferred. Whereas the original Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge circulated its publications through largely one-way and top-down means, contributors to this issue explore knowledge-sharing as a more open, non-hierarchical practice.</p> <p>One might be prompted by physical processes of diffusion to wonder: <strong>How does matter move through bodies, across borders, and into inter-relations?</strong> Sophia Jaworski and Zoë Wool (p. 8) offer a reappraisal of the 1979 train derailment known as the “Mississauga miracle,” analyzing how toxic waste moves, where it gets warehoused, and how risk and contamination are normalized in late industrial societies. Forms of water circulation animate two contributions: artist Katherine Ball (p. 12) shares the schema for a functional DIY filtration system; and Liz Howard’s poem (p. 28) conjures water-witching and surface tension—liquid metaphors that bespeak interconnectedness.</p> <p>Shifting from causes to effects, some might ask: <strong>How is diffusion shaped by the media it traverses?</strong> In contributions by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Xaviera Simmons, geography and language co-constitute artistic interventions. In Simmons’ artist project (cover, p. 3 and 4), the car-centric landscapes of the American southwest serve as the backdrop for probing questions and proclamations on settler colonialism, slavery, plunder, and reparations. For Simpson (p. 14), whose lyrics for the album <em>Theory of Ice</em> are reproduced here in full, song is a potent medium through which land, memory, sorrow, and Anishinaabe resurgence are carried…</p>