Dialogues Between Activist Knowledge and Southern Theory

Abstract

AbstractWhile academia is usually represented in public culture as the most common place for knowledge production, activism is seen more as direct action but less as a source of knowledge in its own right. This chapter troubles those separations using examples from theory and personal experience. Many areas of struggle for social justice and social change have challenged those separations, highlighting the politics that create hierarchies and divisions in knowledge production and suggesting several interconnections. Connell’s “Southern Theory” opens the possibility to reflect on the role of knowledge produced for activist purposes as a kind of knowledge project that is both useful for social struggles and for theory development. These projects operate as interpellation of the politics of not knowing that ignore the issues that are the matter for activism. They also intend to produce knowledge that is useful and makes justice to social struggles. Besides, activist knowledge as a knowledge project challenges power relations by giving those in subordinated positions the possibility to connect in unexpected ways. If the idea is to trouble separations, we need to invent other dialogues between academia and activism, theory and practice and the Global North and the Global South.