Radical Praxis Research Articles

Lugones, Munóz, and the Radical Potential of (Dis)identificatory Feminist Love for "World"-Making Beyond the Academe

In this article I place María Lugones's concept of "world"-travelling in conversation with José Esteban Munóz's disidentification to posit a theory of "world"-travelling as facilitating a disidentificatory practice women of color use in the academe. Herein I propose the possibility of future-making through a praxis that surpasses survival, by traveling between these two theoretical frames, with the purpose of moving with travelling to envisioning and creating new "worlds" within and beyond the academe. I combine these two theories—queer theory and critical transnational feminism—to articulate from a position of (un)ease the radical potential of loving those (un)like us, and travelling with them in between "worlds." In this essay I seek to advance a radical praxis of feminist loving and its possibilities to create new "worlds."

Education as the practice of freedom, from past to future: Student movements and the corporate university

As contemporary universities become increasingly deregulated and neoliberalised structures, how is grassroots student political organising to adapt? What role could student organisers, working in coalition with academics, unions and communities, play in shaping the Future University? We argue that student organising has an even more crucial place in the site of the neoliberal university, working against both the corporatisation of the contemporary university, as well as rising neoliberal conditions in the broader communities within which tertiary education is embedded. These conditions, without doubt, have the potential to stultify student movements by burdening students with ever-increasing debt, and packaging degrees as a commodity with a market-determined value. However, we argue, the neoliberalisation of education also engenders an opportunity for students in shaping the Future University, through grassroots advocacy for staff working conditions, and for critical pedagogies that enable the integration of transformative social justice movements with academic theory. For us, the Future University is a space that nourishes critical and creative thinking, and produces students that are able to integrate theory with radical praxis. However, for this to be realised, the ideological function of the university, in justifying and naturalising hegemonic power structures, and the very meaning of public education, must be exposed and critiqued from the ground up.

Reimagining and radicalizing community development practice in south-east Queensland through popular education action research

Abstract This article analyses the ways community development in Australia has succumbed to neoliberal forces resulting in conservative or reformist practice. Ledwith (Community Development in Action: Putting Freire into Practice, 2015, Policy Press, UK.) argues that popular education theory is a useful vehicle through which community development can recover its emancipatory intentions and take on a more critical role in strategising and acting for structural changes. This article reports on a participatory action research project undertaken in Australia in 2017, to explore what the Popular Education tradition could bring to the field of community development within south-east Queensland. The research aim was to theory-test the possibilities of popular education for influencing contemporary community development in an era of hegemonic service-delivery and welfare work within Australia. Practitioners were exposed to a series of popular education workshops, grounding a clear experiential model for taking theory into action that can advance social justice agendas and further their work. Findings from the project reveal that it is possible to stimulate thinking about radical practice with popular education theory. Moreover, exploration of the theory needs forums and communities of practice for collective critical reflection. Such processes provide both theoretical knowledge and collegial support for practitioners to experiment with actions in line with the radical tradition, and thus develop a radical praxis to resist the worst elements of neoliberalism.

Learning from and Translating Peasant Struggles as Anti-Colonial Praxis: The Ghadar Party in Punjab

The Ghadar Party introduced a radical anticolonial praxis to Punjab, British India, in the early 1910s. Much of the literature on the Ghadar Party situates the birth of the movement among Punjabi peasants along the Pacific coast of North America who returned to their homeland intent on waging an anticolonial mutiny. One strand of argumentation locates the failure of the Ghadar Party in a problem of incompatibility between their migrant political consciousness and the conditions and experiences of their co-patriots in Punjab. I use Antonio Gramsci's concept of “translation,” a semi-metaphorical means to describe political practices that transform existing political struggles, to demonstrate how the Ghadar Party's work of political education was not unidirectional, but rather consisted of learning from peasant experiences and histories of struggle, as well as transforming extant forms of peasant resistance – such as, banditry – for building a radical anticolonial movement. Translation is an anticolonial practice that works on subaltern experiences and struggles. The Ghadar Party's praxis of translating subaltern struggles into anticolonialism is demonstrative of how movements learn from and transform existing movements.

Minding the Gap: Marxian Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Postcapitalism

Building on contemporary debates over the past several decades in Marxist and post-Marxist theory regarding the relationship between capitalism and postcapitalism, this essay will explore the enduring relevance of Marx’s treatment of this issue in some of his most significant, though increasingly less contemporarily engaged with texts (as Capital [Vols. 1-3] and the Grundrisse take pride of place). Here, I look toward the middle and early period of Marx’s oeuvre to pull out the most important statements and insights regarding the relationship between capitalism and postcapitalism, focusing on The German Ideology, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and The Communist Manifesto in order to offer reflections on how Marx’s work, 200 years since his birth, offer the contemporary and future left guidance on “minding the gap” between capitalism and postcapitalism as we live, work, and struggle still deeply ensconced within the confines of the decadent capitalist mode of production. Combing close-reading of key relevant texts in Marx’s oeuvre with reflective commentary on how Marx’s work can speak to the contemporary conjuncture, this paper offers a synthetic commentary on how leftists, both scholars and activists, should approach the question of the relationship between radical praxis within capitalism and the character of potential postcapitalisms that may emerge. This essay is loosely organised around three crucial questions: (1) What can we learn from Marx’s discussions on the historical transition and the overall radical intellectual project of dialectical materialism that can assist us in understanding the transition from capitalism to a democratic, egalitarian postcapitalism (i.e., socialism/communism), specifically concerning complexity and time? (2) How does contemporary capitalism reproduce itself social-psychologically (i.e., ideologically) and what are the implications of that for a postcapitalist transformation? (3) What is/are the role(s) of revolutionaries in dealing with the first two questions?

Towards radical praxis through a new formation in practice development

Background: This paper argues that achieving social and cultural transformation in healthcare, and beyond, needs to come from an orientation of an explicit ethical stance around critical awareness and articulation of the affects of historical, political, social and cultural structures of oppression. There is discussion around how practice development language forms a discourse of harm, and how practice development environments reproduce and maintain structures of oppression. Aim: Drawing on the work of feminist critical social praxis concerned with corporeal experiences and the affects emanating from embodied practices, this paper will bring to the fore marginalisations and oppressions experienced by particular bodies, and ask what do practice developers need to consider and act on to make practice development more socially just? Method: Application of feminist critical social praxis, a theoretical dimension thus far unexplored in the practice development field, as a framework for asking what practice development can learn. Particular attention is drawn to the benefits of orientating a new formation in practice development around the work of Black feminists and feminists of colour – of looking to the margins and bringing those centre. Findings: Illumination of new insights into how to build a feminist critical social justice oriented practice development through the explicit practice of naming and raising consciousness around the lived experiences and materiality of oppressed and marginalised peoples. Conclusion: Achieving radical cultural, social, political and economic transformation needs to come from an orientation of explicit critical awareness and recognition of the politics of affects of neoliberal, neo-colonial capitalist systems. Implications for practice: A feminist critical social justice ethical stance can enable practice development, as a methodology, and practice developers as implementers of that methodology, to respond to this paper’s invitation to stand in solidarity against systematic structural oppressions and form a new more reflective, critical and socially just practice development.

Translating Peasant Resistance to Anti-Colonialism: the Ghadar Party in Punjab, 1914-1915

The Ghadar Party introduced a radical anti-colonial praxis to Punjab, British India, in the early 1910s. Much of the literature on the Ghadar Party situates the birth of the movement among Punjabi peasants along the Pacific coast of North America who returned to their homeland intent on waging an anti-colonial mutiny. Harish Puri (1993) locates the failure of the Ghadar Party in the impossibility of translating their migrant political consciousness among their co-patriots in Punjab. Further, he argues that their lack of organization skills led to their demise. I argue in this paper that the Ghadar Party's political organizing made attempts at translating anti-colonial ideology into Punjab. This was accomplished through translating extant forms of peasant resistance, such as banditry and mutiny, into the social and political context of 1910s Punjab. Further, the appearance of lack of organization really was a belief in organized spontaneity and an under-mediated notion of rebellion.The Ghadar Party introduced a radical anti-colonial praxis to Punjab, British India, in the early 1910s. Much of the literature on the Ghadar Party situates the birth of the movement among Punjabi peasants along the Pacific coast of North America who returned to their homeland intent on waging an anti-colonial mutiny. Harish Puri (1993) locates the failure of the Ghadar Party in the impossibility of translating their migrant political consciousness among their co-patriots in Punjab. Further, he argues that their lack of organization skills led to their demise. I argue in this paper that the Ghadar Party's political organizing made attempts at translating anti-colonial ideology into Punjab. This was accomplished through translating extant forms of peasant resistance, such as banditry and mutiny, into the social and political context of 1910s Punjab. Further, the appearance of lack of organization really was a belief in organized spontaneity and an under-mediated notion of rebellion.

Introduction: critical development studies—critique and radical praxis

Introduction: critical development studies—critique and radical praxis

When intersectionality met childhood studies: the dilemmas of a travelling concept

Childhood studies/geographies have a longstanding interest in questions around multiple social inequalities and identities in diverse socio-spatial contexts, but have not yet seriously considered the politics of intersectionality. Importing intersectionality into childhood studies is neither a straightforward nor an unproblematic process. We suggest that the question that childhood studies/geographies scholars must confront is how intersectionality can be used in this interdisciplinary field in ways which recognise and take seriously the intellectual history and labour of Black women and preserve the integrity of intersectionality’s radical praxis of emancipatory knowledge production and collective action for social justice. This article examines how intersectionality and its emancipatory politics might be preserved, strengthened and enhanced when it is operationalised in a context of childhood studies/geographies.

Politics at a distance from the state: radical, South African and Zimbabwean praxis today

ABSTRACTFor decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified radical social transformation with the capture of state power. The collapse of supposedly enabling states led recently to a crisis of left and working class politics. But this has also opened space for the rediscovery of society-centred, anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, labelled as ‘at a distance’ politics. These modes have registered important successes in practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and have involved strands of anarchism and syndicalism, and autonomist Marxism. This article, an introduction to a collection of papers emerging from a 2012 conference of academics and activists in South Africa, aims to help articulate an understanding of social transformation from below that has been analytically and politically side-lined not only in South Africa (and Zimbabwe), but globally. In doing so, it provides a preliminary attempt to map and create a dialogue between three major positions within the broad category of ‘at a distance’ politics.

Ethnography: A Prototype

ABSTRACTThe article describes a long-term collaboration with a variety of free culture activists in Madrid: digital artists, software developers and guerrilla architectural collectives. Coming of age as Spain walked into the abyss of the economic crisis, we describe how we re-functioned our ethnographic project into a ‘prototype’. We borrow the notion of prototype from free culture activism: a socio-technical design characterised by the openness of its underlying technical and structural sources, including for example access to its code, its technical and design specifications, and documentary and archival registries. These ethnographic prototypes functioned as boundary objects and zones of infrastructural enablement that allowed us to argue with our collaborators about the city at the same time as we argued through the city. Providing a symmetrical counterpoint to the actions of free culture hackers elsewhere in the city, our anthropological prototypes were both a cultural signature of the radical praxis taking place in Madrid today and its expressive infrastructure.

Religious Heretic, Political Prophet

Abstract The religious and political thought of Malcolm X underscores a radical politico-ethical tradition that speaks to a fundamental but neglected aspect of American democracy: the idea that democracy cannot flourish without a radical (individual and collective) ethics. Malcolm X's speeches, particularly in his late career, illustrate the degree to which American democracy is unrealizable unless it can give an account of human finitude in a social context of anti-Black racism. I contend that Malcolm X's move toward human rights activism during his mature political development is contingent on a radical ethics at the individual and group level. It is an ethical practice based on reflective intentionality and creative exchange. I call this vision of radical praxis abolition ethics.

Aquarius and Beyond: Thinking through the Counterculture

Aquarius and Beyond: Thinking through the Counterculture

Heroin Use as Everyday Radicalism: Opiate Consumers and the Leftist Counter-Culture in Frankfurt am Main, 1970–80

This article details the impact of heroin in the early to mid-1970s leftist scene, with a focus on Frankfurt am Main, but an eye to larger developments in West Germany as a whole. Heroin challenged leftist assumptions about substance use and made a deep impact on the West German counter-culture, student left, and New Left at large. Early heroin users saw themselves as part of the left, and the practices of heroin consumption can be usefully seen as a sort of everyday radical praxis. Heroin users saw in the substance a way to ‘do something’ against a society they deemed oppressive. The wider counter-culture never embraced the drug and, indeed, repudiated its use as reactionary much in the same way that they eventually repudiated the violent activism of West German terror groups. As such, heroin users took part in and helped shape the process of splintering and radicalization that defined the early 1970s counter-culture in West Germany.

The Power of the Wave: Activism Rainbow Region-Style

The Power of the Wave: Activism Rainbow Region-Style

A collective biography of joy in academic practice

Changing working conditions at many universities over the past decade have meant longer hours, intensified record-keeping, and more precarious employment. Despite these changes, many academics still insist that we enjoy our jobs. Our inquiry is oriented toward spaces and practices that bring us joy in our daily work and help us withstand the negative effects of working in academia. This article reports on our exploration of some moments of joy at work as part of our own academic practice. Through a feminist methodology known and developed as collective biography, we wrote individual memories of joy in our teaching, publishing, and collaborating, together at a writing retreat. As we analyzed these recalled moments, we came to realize that joy emerges through a turbulent process fueled by a cocktail of emotions. In fact, we came to understand joy as affect, with affect seen as a certain sort of excess, generated around and through sensations that might contribute to feelings such as celebration, happiness, or surprise as well as fear, anger, or embarrassment. We conclude that joy does things, that it can be transformative, and that cultivating joy in academia is part of a radical praxis.

Towards a libertarian turn? Notes on the past and future of radical urban research and praxis

Marxists have always tried to present the history of the workers' movement as if it were the history of Marxist organising efforts, and the history of critical ideas as if it were the history of Marxist thought; consequently, the crisis of Marxism has been presented as a crisis of radical thought as such. However, new radical social movements and thinkers have appeared during the last two decades - and a libertarian flavour is a common feature of many of these movements and thinkers. It would be wrong to exaggerate the contemporary role of libertarian thought and praxis, as some of them still present Marxist discursive or even practical elements; that is to say, some of them are more or less ‘hybrid.’ But it would be equally wrong to deny the relevance of a clear, present-day resurgence of libertarian ideas and ideals. The scenario of a widespread ‘libertarian turn’ similar to the ‘radical [≈ Marxist] turn’ of the 1970s is for several reasons unlikely. Nonetheless, considering some current trends, the hypothesis of a ‘mid-ranged’ or ‘partial’ libertarian turn is totally plausible. In fact, my hypothesis is that such a ‘libertarian turn’ is already ongoing. How can socio-spatial research in general, and urban studies in particular, help us understand (and perhaps inspire or at least support) the (re)new(ed) forms of insurgent praxis and thinking we have witnessed in the last two decades? And to what extent will the libertarians (activists, academics and scholars-activists) be able to explore and use the currently existing room for manoeuvre?

Exiled at Home: Writing Return and the Palestinian Home

Drawing on our personal histories navigating the violence of Israeli settler colonialism and militarization, we theorize the Palestinian home space as not only a physical, but also a psychological and epistemological space of yearning, of belonging, and of radical thinking and becoming. In light of the colonial state’s continued attempts to further fragment and dislocate indigenous Palestinians from their homeland, we posit an analytics of returning to our home/land as a space of reconstructing Palestinian socialities and identities, of re-rooting through a radical praxis of love that can give birth to new forms of resistance.

Tiny Drops: Henri de Lubac, S.J., Dorothy Day, and Anti-Triumphalism as Radical Praxis

The only immediate remedy is the practice of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. When asked what is the program of THE CATHOLIC WORKER by those who are interested in political action, legislation, lobbying, class war, we reply—It is the program set forth by Christ in the Gospels. The Catholic Manifesto is The Sermon on the Mount. And when we bring THE CATHOLIC WORKER into the streets and public squares, and when we picket the Mexican consulate, it is to practice the spiritual works of mercy—to instruct the ignorant and to comfort the afflicted.

Return to the City of Quartz: Excavating the Future 20 Years On

This paper revisits Mike Davis’ seminal City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles twenty years after it was originally published. It argues that the book continues to provide an indispensable model for left, politically engaged forms of urban research. The paper criticizes the apocalyptic readings of City of Quartz that have multiplied over time and instead suggests that Davis be read for his emphasis on an urban dialectic—the constant and ongoing struggles over urban form, politics and culture that shape the geographies of Los Angeles to this day. To this end, the paper looks to the city's more recent history, especially current battles being fought over the future of downtown L.A., to illustrate how we might continue to use Davis’ framework for critical analyses of urban power. At the same time, the paper addresses inadequacies of what has been called the “L.A. School” and its singularly postmodern approach to urban questions that fail to provide coherent understanding of the material realities of modern American cities. It argues that something like an L.A. School can be more properly grounded in the historical-materialist, even socialist, forms of writing and thinking developed in works like City of Quartz and much of the critical urban geography that came in its footsteps. Ultimately the paper is a call for scholarship on Los Angeles to be deeply engaged with both the concrete and abstract dimensions of a place, not for the sake of theory alone, but to further radical praxis in Los Angeles and all American cities.