Enfilade

The latest issue of J18:

Journal18, Issue #20 (Fall 2025) — Clean

Issue edited by Maarten Delbeke, Noémie Etienne, and Nikos Magouliotis

Cleaning is never a neutral act. In the eighteenth century, acts of cleaning became a way to decide what counted as disorder, to separate asserted purity from designated pollution, and to display authority over matter, space, and people. From the forecourt of Paris’s Notre-Dame to the Ganges river in Varanasi to Scotland’s filthy privies, practices of cleaning have shaped political order. Racial issues, colonization, and the management of public space revolved around the idea and implementation of cleaning, which could also involve the deliberate relocation or erasure of human beings.

a r t i c l e s

Economies of Waste: Revolutionary Administration and the Afterlives of the Kings of Notre-Dame — Demetra Vogiatzaki

‘Beneath the Waters of a Universal Ocean’: Containing, Contaminating, and Cleaning the Ganges River in Varanasi — Ushma Thakrar

Piss, Poison, and other Paths between Scotland and England in Caricature since 1745 — Laura Golobish

c o n v e r s a t i o n  p i e c e

The Grammar of Cleaning: A Conversation — Maarten Delbeke, Noémie Etienne, and Nikos Magouliotis

All articles are available for free here, along with recent notes & queries:

r e c e n t  n o t e s  a n d  q u e r i e s

Marie Antoinette Style: An Exhibition Catalogue Review — Madeleine Luckel

Room for the Lost Paradise: A Symposium — Jason M. Kelly

Reflections on Mai, Joshua Reynolds, and Eighteenth-Century Art — A Roundtable

Colonial Crossings: A Review — Juan Manuel Ramírez Velázquez