Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization
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.

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

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Just as we use narratives to construct and deconstruct our social world, so narratives about forms of politics open up or delimit possibilities for organization. But the relation of radical academics and intellectuals and the social movements we work with (or more often talk about with little real connection) has had a tenuous and not always positive history. Far too often radical theorists have used their knowledge or ideas to claim leadership roles and positions of power within movements, attempting to control and direct through vanguard structures, leading to many problems despite their positive intentions. The practices of the interwoven strands of the global justice movement, creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties, or corporation, demand that radical theorists and academics critically rethink their role in and relation to movements, and the nature of intellectual practice itself.

Constituent Imagination was released by AK Press in May 2007. For further information and updates will be posted in this site as they become available. Interested individuals are also encouraged to check out the "Inscribing Organized Resistance" of the journal ephemera, which grew out of this project.

 

http://www.constituentimagination.net

 

 

 

Events!

Want to host an event on militant research and the themes discussed in Constituent Imagination? Send a message to sshuka [at] essex.ac.uk

"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

 
 

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