Eureka moments
Every so often, I come across something on this here world wide web that so beautifully interweaves with my research pursuits it’s like some kind of gift from the academic heavens. The latest issue of Ephemera journal is one such thing - containing all the story-telling that I wanted and got from We Are Everywhere, but also going further than this and paying proper attention to feminist thought (very rarely mentioned in global justice movement research and activist tracts, even though feminist thought and activism arguably pre-figures the movement and its scholarship), and embedding a deep enunciation of power relations and therefore reflexive ethics, stuff which simply *must* be a part of all thoughtful accounts of this ‘movement’, and stuff that I want to be writing about in yon PhD (a sense that is only stronger for hanging out in rural Sao Paulo al momento).
I am particularly glad of, in a sigh-of-frustration kind of way, Tadzio Mueller’s account of women’s (lack of) safety in the ‘inter-continental youth camp’ 2005 (the name ‘youth camp’ signals ‘nightmare’ enough, surely!). This sort of stuff is ever-present in activist locales (my own unpleasant and head-fucking experiences in this regard is another entry in itself). Naming it and working with it is absolutely non-negotiable; rather than pretending that we are living out some kind of domination-free utopia in our quest for such a world - which of course, only ever ends in reproducing those very same dominations.