_Artery_ is a forthcoming book that takes readers on an immersive journey into the world of transport, travel, and trade along Colombia’s Magdalena River. This legendary waterway connecting the country’s Andean interior and Caribbean coast has long served as a conduit for the expansion of colonial and racial capitalism in the Americas. A period of stagnation began in the 1950s, but state-backed projects have recently sought to resuscitate commercial navigation through a series of engineering works.

Extending the debate on the role of social media in international politics in general, and online diplomatic participation in particular, this paper seeks to conceptualise the communicative modalities for public engagement with foreign policy issues at the crossroads of public diplomacy and transnational activism. Specifically, I theorise the emergence of ‘diplotainment’, a campaigning genre that mixes mimicry of diplomatic officialdom with the affective power of promotionally-styled counter-narratives.

With some recent exceptions, demands for global reparations have largely been ignored by former colonial countries. While the past two decades has seen renewed interest in colonial reparations in normative political theory and philosophy, this work has focused on determining responsibility for redress. By contrast, relatively little has been said on the further question of how redress might be sought in face of persistent colonial amnesia and apologia.