A Politics of Encounter: Knowledge and Organizing in Common

Abstract

want to begin with the relation of activism to academia not as a problem of the separation or conjunction between these realms but as a problem of practices and structures internal to both. We often assume that these are principally antagonistic and mutually distrustful fields, characterized by activist anti-intellectualism with regard to the academy and academic skepticism with regard to social change. This leaves us with the idea that we must bridge the two fields, which in turn tends to rely on innovative individuals to carry forth this task, a poor frame of reference that is more a reflection of the problems within each realm—the central figure of innovative individual—than a solu- tion. I'd like to move away from the idea of bridging, but also away from the categories of activism and academia altogether to think about organization and knowledge production. While these things can happen within activism and academia, there is no guarantee that they will. My thinking about the relation between knowledge and organizing comes from a collective organizational process that includes exposure to movements around the world, including and perhaps most importantly Zapatismo, but is primarily based on the work of the organization of which I am a part, El Kilombo Intergalactico. Based in Durham, North Carolina, El Kilombo is made up primarily of students, migrants, and African American members of our local community, who work toward the creation of dignified housing, the produc- tion of and access to healthy food sources, and cooperative self-employment. All organizational projects are created by and for the community itself. The concepts presented here come from our collective thought and work. Activism and Academia What issues internal to activism and academia impede organization and knowl- edge production today? A first problem might be thought of as the extraction of the individual from the processes of knowledge production and political action through the formation of the professionalized identities of academic