Duncan Riley is a recent graduate of Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he studied history and Spanish. His previous work includes the historical thesis Ciudadanos. At present, he splits his time between his job, chatting with friends on the phone to relieve pandemic-induced feelings of isolation, and organizing with No Cages Minnesota for a better and more humane world.
The plague that devours Oran is less a proxy for a manifestly odious occupying force than it is emblematic of the contradictions inherent in democracy, in which the limits of liberal universalism and equality collide against the violent reality of state power.