Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective
Theorization
http://www.constituentimagination.net
Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis + David
Graeber with Erika Biddle
From the ivory tower to the barricades!
Radical intellectuals explore the relationship between research and
resistance.
What is the relationship of radical theory
to movements for social change? In a world where more and more global
struggles are refusing vanguard parties and authoritarian practices,
does the idea of the detached intellectual, observing events from on
high, make sense anymore? In this powerful and unabashedly militant
collection, over two dozen academic authors and engaged
intellectuals—including Antonio Negri and Colectivo Situaciones—provide
some challenging answers. In the process, they redefine the nature of
intellectual practice itself.
The book opens with the editors’
provocative history of the academy’s inherent limitations and
possibilities. The essays that follow cover a broad range: embedded
intellectuals in increasingly corporatized universities, research
projects in which factory workers and academics work side by side,
revolutionary ethnographies of the global justice movement, meditations
on technology from the branches of a Scottish tree-sit. What links them
all is a collective and expansive reimagining of engaged intellectual
work in the service of social change. In a cultural climate in where
right-wing watchdog groups seem to have radical academics on the run,
this unapologetic anthology is a breath of fresh air.
“These essays
present a series of inspiring examples of how to conduct research for
radical politics both inside and outside the university.” – Michael
Hardt, author (with Antonio Negri) of Empire and The
Labor of Dionysus
“This book is one of a kind. This book
answers the question of what anarchist social studies, as opposed to
conventional marxism or liberalism might look like. It combines a
searching discussion of methods of research with substantive issues
such as “who is the researcher?” Arguing that research is engaged or it
is nothing, that “academics” who have no commitment to fundamental
social change generally cannot produce work that illuminates the world
and sparks the radical imagination, the various authors represented in
this volume have collectively made a critical contribution to
knowledge. The introduction is itself a major contribution to our
understanding of the significance of what the editors call '68
thought', the reference being not only to the famous May events in
France but to the Italian hot autumn of the following year.” – Stanley
Aronowitz, author of False Promises and The
Knowledge Factory
Includes materials from Brian Holmes * Ben
Holtzman // Craig Hughes // Kevin Van Meter * Antonio Negri * Colectivo
Situaciones * Gavin Grindon * Maribel Casas-Cortes + Sebastian
Cobarrubias * Angela Mitropolous * Jack Bratich * Harry Halpin * Jeff
Juris * Gaye Chan + Nandita Sharma * Ben Shepard * Kirsty Robertson *
Bre * Anita Lacey * Michal Osterweil + Graeme Chesters * Dave Eden *
Uri Gordon * Ashar Latif + Sandra Jeppesen
Available now from AK Press:
http://www.akpress.org
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