Disrupting the flow: Still-activism redirecting neo-liberal capitalism

Abstract

Abstract The performance of stillness is a potent tool of contemporary activism, utilized in the Chipko movement against forest privatization in Uttarakhand, India, protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline in North America, and Pick Up America’s litter clean-up across the United States. These activists choreograph stillness to interrupt the ontological flow of modernity – and concurrently the material flow of capital and resources – in order to intervene in the unsustainable components of the neo-liberal capitalist system. This investigation highlights the body as central to interrupting regimes of capital and subjectivity through non-violent means – in this case, through what the author calls still-activism.