Cruel Pessimism and Waiting for Belonging: Towards a Global Political Economy of Affect

Recent theorizations of affect have focused largely on Western historical, political and aesthetic contexts to distinguish between affect and emotion. Notably, these interventions offer new imaginaries to reinvigorate analysis of politics in the face of shrinking possibilities. However, much of this literature views affect as autonomous from emotion, while overlooking the political history of development and the differentiated relation to affect under colonial capitalism in other historical contexts. This paper studies subaltern engagement in activist performance in India to address these issues. It thinks through Lauren Berlant's account of the aesthetic genre and affective structure of cruel optimism, and her focus on historical contexts where people have recently lost the vision of a good life. By contrast, focusing on the historical present of those born into a pervasive and intractable sense of marginality and insecurity, I ask: what is the subject's relation to affect and activism in contexts where the loss of vision of a good life is not new under neoliberalism, but rather, reworks long-standing violence and inclusion/exclusion of colonial capitalism and nation-state histories. I argue that it is useful to understand Berlant's ‘materialist context for affect theory’ in light of uneven global histories of colonialism, development and neoliberalism. The affective experience of time is different across different spaces. As such, this paper contributes a global materialist context for affect theory, by focusing on activist theatre by a tribe called Chhara, designated ‘born criminals’ by British colonial law – a status legally denotified in 1952, but that is practically still effective in postcolonial India. Competing affective structures – sentimental optimism, cruel pessimism, betrayal and ordinary regard – shape and are shaped by Chhara negotiations with branded criminality. Ultimately, for the postcolonial subject, surviving in the neoliberal present involves vacillating among competing affective structures, only some of which generate sustained political critique.     

The Solidary Relationship’s Consequences for the Ebb and Flow of Activism: Collaborative Evidence from Life-History Interviews and Social Media Event Analysis,

Acting in solidarity with deprived others has become a central topic in social movement research. The explanations of solidarity activism or political altruism are few. However, social movement researchers have claimed that solidarity with out-of-group others is a by-product of in-group interaction. In contrast, we argue that out-group interaction with the deprived other and the formation of a solidary relationship is central to the ebb and flow of solidarity activism. We investigate the Danish refugee solidarity movement and show that the meeting with the deprived other 1) brings about an interaction order which makes an ethical demand on the activists to care for the other both within the bounds of the situations and in the future; 2) enacts and amplifies activists’ values and beliefs because the deprived other becomes an exemplar of the injustice and the need to help the broader group of people in the same fragile situation. We develop and test this theory drawing on 42 life-history interviews and a social media dataset containing a panel of 87,455 activists participating in refugee solidarity groups.     

The “diseased” activist's body as the site of trauma: Anti-racist struggles and the postrace academy

This paper is an autoethnographic account of the “racialized activist body” in the White academy and in tandem the bio-politics and bio-ethics of its right to be an affective body or to possess its senses against the trauma of anti-racist struggles in higher education institutions. The paper argues that in the postrace university, the “activist body” birthed through trauma becomes a conduit for the pain of others enacting it as a site for the deposition and transmutation of trauma in the quest for racial and social justice. It employs Bracha Ettinger’s notion of “matrixial borderspace” to examine the interplay of social relations between of the activist body and other traumatized subjects in the provision of care as an activist. Two narratives unfold in the paper fusing the articulations of the main text with the paratext to unleash the tumultuous psyche of the activist and her journey of voicing resistance in her anti-racist struggles. In the process, the activist body emerges as a “diseased site,” overloaded with the trauma of others, yet numbed in its inability to reconnect with its own corporeality and professional identity in its interface with White governmentality. The paper asserts that anti-racist struggles reassemble the activist body, tightly welding it with exhaustion which manifests in the pervasiveness of racial battle fatigue in the ivory tower.     

Social movement schools: sites for consciousness transformation,training, and prefigurative social development

ABSTRACT

We develop the concept of “social movement school’ (SMS), showing how these organizational spaces are deliberately designed for purposes of educating, mentoring, training, and coordinating individuals as effective, committed movement agents. SMSs can also be important sites of prefigurative design and practice for future societal development consistent with movement goals. We motivate the theoretical significance of SMSs based on five perspectives in social movement scholarship: (1) resource mobilization; (2) cultural approaches to repertoires of contention; (3) cognitive perspective; (4) micro-mobilization; and (5) biographical consequences of participation. We then offer a typology to capture primary purposes, and spatial reach within the broad field of SMSs. Within-movement variation is illustrated by focusing on a variety of SMSs in the U.S. civil rights movement; and the cross-movement breadth of the concept is illustrated by highlighting contemporary SMS forms drawn from three very different movements–labor, radical feminism, and mindfulness meditation movements. In the interest of launching a research agenda on SMSs, we end with several key questions that could serve to guide future research. Important theoretical, empirical, and practical considerations suggest that SMSs deserve the attention of scholars and activists alike.     

著名土壤学家陈恩凤教授学术思想研究——纪念陈恩凤教授百岁诞辰

为了纪念著名土壤学家陈恩凤教授诞辰100周年,《沈阳农业大学学报（社会科学版）》农学家研究栏目专题介绍陈恩凤教授的学术思想以及他在土壤地理、土壤肥力和土壤改良等领域做出的卓著科学成就,以志怀念。陈恩凤教授一生热爱科学,追求真理,学术成就显著,教书育人,培养出众多的高素质人才,桃李满天下。他的学术思想、科学成就和教学艺术,以及高尚的人格魅力,令后人感佩不己,受益终生。     

英雄伦理与抗争行动的持续性——以鲁西农民抗争积极分子为例

在中国乡村抗争研究中,农民抗争的动机经常被理解为一种“受损逻辑”。虽然受损逻辑能够部分解释抗争行动的发起,但却不能解释在利益补偿、伦理关系修复的情况下,抗争为何会继续进行。本文在对鲁西农民抗争积极分子进行研究的基础上指出,推动抗争积极分子持续抗争的动机是一种由抗争行动本身带来的、突出的、不同于受损逻辑的“英雄伦理”。这种英雄伦理发展出了互助连带机制、等级区分机制和友情再造机制等三种机制,从而推动着抗争的持续进行。然而,这三种机制在推动抗争持续进行的同时,也存在着各自内在的限制。最后,笔者讨论了“英雄伦理”对于理解中国乡村抗争政治的贡献。     

Resisting Neoliberalism from within the Academy: Subversion through an Activist Pedagogy

Teaching and learning in the neoliberal academy means that educators in non-market-oriented departments, such as social work, face several constraints and challenges when trying to implement an anti-oppressive, social justice focused curriculum. This article considers challenges that can arise with an introductory social work course in the current context of neoliberalism, especially when open to both social work and non-social work students. With a particular focus on larger class sizes, the use of precarious labour and the depoliticization of the classroom, the authors use an inductive, reflective approach to analyse observations made about shifts in the behaviour and engagement of students in the course. The authors surmise possible explanations for these shifts, considering changes made to the substantive content and pedagogical practices of the course. Through this process the authors propose that these changes represent an ‘activist pedagogy’ which may offer potential for anti-oppressive education with students both inside and outside social work. As such, the authors propose ‘activist pedagogy’ as a possible way to resist and subvert the neoliberal educational paradigm and to better integrate the principles and practices of social justice and anti-oppressive social work into the classroom.     

Tagging for activist ends and strategic ephemerality: creating the Sex Work Database as an activist digital archive

The Sex Work Database project is an interdisciplinary collaboration, currently based in Canada, to research and design digital activist archives of “born digital” and digitized academic research, print and visual media, grassroots activism, and commemorative responses related to missing and murdered women and sex work. This paper discusses the project’s development over its first few years, and discusses the complexities of organizing and representing digital/digitized information using a feminist anti-violence framework. In doing so, we introduce and examine two challenges we have encountered to date: designing a tagging system that expresses the activist frame of the Sex Work Database, and the ethics and efficacy of strategic ephemerality for materials produced by sex worker activists.     

"郑经是台独分子"说质疑--以《东壁楼集》为佐证

某些"台独"学者为了替自己寻找历史根据而称郑经在台湾"独立建国";中国大陆也有人"以古鉴今"而说郑经是分裂国家的"台独分子".对此,不断有学者依据史料加以质疑和辩驳.近年新发现的郑经<东壁楼集>中的近五百首诗,呈现一位继承其父郑成功遗志和"遗民忠义精神",始终奉明正朔,矢志抗清复土,时而孤独消沉,时而慷慨激昂的抒情主人公形象.这是郑经并非"台独分子"的佐证.对历史人物的判断要慎重,与某些"台独"学者针锋相对地争夺对历史、文化的阐释权是不容忽视的.