Cricket interruptus: fairness and incentive in interrupted ...
SOLIDARITY AFTER OCCUPY: THINKING ABOUT … · PAPER ABSTRACT: Almost twenty years ago, Nancy...
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The challenge of decolonization The Occupy movement has been criticized from the outset for failing to take seriously that the wealth of the richest “One Percent” has been accumulated as profits from colonized lands and resources (Walia, 2014; Pasternak, 2014). These challenges illustrate the ways urban anti-poverty and anti-capitalist movements in Canada remain ill-equipped to engage decolonial struggles alongside questions of economic inequality. Many social justice oriented organizations claim to be anticolonial without following through on these commitments in theoretical frameworks and organizing practices. This research responds to the question: Is it possible to imagine and enact a redistributive politics in solidarity with decolonial movements? If so, what are some important considerations for research or strategies for doing so? Everyday ethics of interruption Banks et al. (2013) call for an ‘everyday ethics’ of community-based participatory research wherein ethics is situated not in abstract principles, but in ways of being and acting in relationships. I connect everyday ethics and what I call an ethics of interruption – building on the interruptions of Simpson and Fraser – to inform an intersectional approach to solidarity- building in antipoverty movements. This everyday ethics of interruption involves three interconnected practices: 1. Examine the conditions of knowledge production in the academy (a knowledge economy wherein the drive to author and possess authorizes certain voices). 2. Interrupt metanarratives of the Canadian state and settler colonial self-justifications. This complicates claims for redistribution directed towards the state by social justice activists. 3. Reassess the uncritical inclusion of “real voices” in research with marginalized populations (Tuck & Yang, 2014). Centering experiential perspectives, but not just reproducing pain stories, this approach examines institutions and power relations along with bottom-up sources of authority that unsettle settler knowledge. Unsettling antipoverty research PAPER ABSTRACT: Almost twenty years ago, Nancy Fraser published Justice Interruptus (1997) – a call to recenter questions of class and redistribution alongside the politics of recognition. This paper reconsiders Fraser’s contribution and the politics of redistribution with respect to critiques in decolonial theory, and specifically Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus (2014). In the face of ongoing efforts to eliminate Indigenous collectivities, Simpson conceptualizes the assertion of Mohawk sovereignty and nationhood as a politics of refusal that challenges the authority of the state to bestow rights and recognition upon Indigenous peoples. Any politics of redistribution must engage with the ethical and political challenge of decolonization because of the centrality of wealth accumulated through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples (Tuck and Yang, 2012). Whereas Coulthard (2014) has significantly brought decolonization into discussion with recognition, I bring decolonization into discussion with redistribution. Further, I propose an everyday ethics of interruption – building on the interruptions of Simpson and Fraser – that can inform research on and practices of intersectional solidarity-building in antipoverty movements. the politics of redistribution From Nancy Fraser to the Occupy Movement In a 2016 interview, Fraser explains that her work in the 1990s was specifically responding to the decline of a redistributive paradigm and the loss of the anti-capitalist ethos that initially characterized the New Social Movements of the 1960s. But, Fraser says, tables have turned and in 2016 we find inequality at the forefront of Euro-American politics, reflecting a “different kind of balance” between recognition and redistribution claims. In fact, prominent critiques of Wall Street appear to be directly mirroring the rhetoric of the Occupy movement. Fraser’s work offers a fruitful challenge to the inadequacy of any politics of recognition that does not address unjust material conditions. However, she fails to see that decolonial claims – which challenge colonial relations, colonial ways of thinking and the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous lands and resources – are not reducible to either recognition or material benefits granted by an outside authority. aCknowledgements Thanks to my colleagues and teachers, many of whom have provided comments on the development of this research paper and poster: Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez, Cressida Heyes, Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Danielle Taschereau-Mamers, Jakeet Singh, Marta Bashovski, Joëlle Alice Michaud-Ouellet, Dax D’Orazio, Margot Challborn, Luke Sandle. references Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. New York: Routledge. Fraser, N. (2016). Clinton embodies a neoliberal kind of feminism which mostly benefits privileged women. [Interview with Álvaro Guzmán Bastida]. Retrieved from, http://ctxt.es/ es/20160420/Politica/5538/fraser-feminism-Hillary-Clinton-neoliberal-feminism-redistribution- recognition-representation-Estados-Unidos-Entrevistas-The-English-Corner.htm Pasternak, S. (2014). Occupy(ed) Canada: The political economy of Indigenous dispossession. In The Kino-nda-niimi Collective (Eds.), The Winter We Danced (40-43). Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books. Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler states. Durham: Duke University Press. Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1-40. Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2014). Unbecoming claims: Pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 811-818. Walia, H. (2014). Decolonizing together: Moving Beyond a Politics of Solidarity Toward a Practice of Decolonization. In The Kino-nda-niimi Collective (Eds.), The Winter We Danced (44-50). Winnipeg, MB: ARP. contact Renée McBeth is a PhD Student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta ([email protected]). SOLIDARITY AFTER OCCUPY: THINKING ABOUT FRAGMENTATION AND ALLIANCES IN ANTIPOVERTY ACTIVISM by renée e. mcbeth structural and political implications This project focuses on ethical and methodological approaches as a basis for further research. In particular, I will conduct textual and participatory field research that considers the structural and political implications of decolonial and feminist theory with respect to redistribution. That is, what becomes of redistribution claims when one takes seriously decolonial claims? Art by Tiago Hoisel. Retrieved from, http://genqueue.tumblr.com/post/34791813278/on-the-vacuous- ness-of-neoliberalism-as-a Artist unknown. “Decolonize Wallstreet.” Retrieved from, https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress. Photo by Renée McBeth. Kym Hines with poster. Photo by Renée McBeth
Transcript of SOLIDARITY AFTER OCCUPY: THINKING ABOUT … · PAPER ABSTRACT: Almost twenty years ago, Nancy...
The challenge of decolonizationThe Occupy movement has been criticized from the outset for failing to take seriously that the wealth of the richest “One Percent” has been accumulated as profits from colonized lands and resources (Walia, 2014; Pasternak, 2014). These challenges illustrate the ways urban anti-poverty and anti-capitalist movements in Canada remain ill-equipped to engage decolonial struggles alongside questions of economic inequality. Many social justice oriented organizations claim to be anticolonial without following through on these commitments in theoretical frameworks and organizing practices.
This research responds to the question: Is it possible to imagine and enact a redistributive politics in solidarity with decolonial movements? If so, what are some important considerations for research or strategies for doing so?
Everyday ethics of interruptionBanks et al. (2013) call for an ‘everyday ethics’ of community-based participatory research wherein ethics is situated not in abstract principles, but in ways of being and acting in relationships. I connect everyday ethics and what I call an ethics of interruption – building on the interruptions of Simpson and Fraser – to inform an intersectional approach to solidarity-building in antipoverty movements. This everyday ethics of interruption involves three interconnected practices:
1. Examine the conditions of knowledge production in the academy (a knowledge economy wherein the drive to author and possess authorizes certain voices).
2. Interrupt metanarratives of the Canadian state and settler colonial self-justifications. This complicates claims for redistribution directed towards the state by social justice activists.
3. Reassess the uncritical inclusion of “real voices” in research with marginalized populations (Tuck & Yang, 2014). Centering experiential perspectives, but not just reproducing pain stories, this approach examines institutions and power relations along with bottom-up sources of authority that unsettle settler knowledge.
Unsettling antipoverty researchPAPER ABSTRACT: Almost twenty years ago, Nancy Fraser published Justice Interruptus (1997) – a call to recenter questions of class and redistribution alongside the politics of recognition. This paper reconsiders Fraser’s contribution and the politics of redistribution with respect to critiques in decolonial theory, and specifically Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus (2014). In the face of ongoing efforts to eliminate Indigenous collectivities, Simpson conceptualizes the assertion of Mohawk sovereignty and nationhood as a politics of refusal that challenges the authority of the state to bestow rights and recognition upon Indigenous peoples. Any politics of redistribution must engage with the ethical and political challenge of decolonization because of the centrality of wealth accumulated through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples (Tuck and Yang, 2012). Whereas Coulthard (2014) has significantly brought decolonization into discussion with recognition, I bring decolonization into discussion with redistribution. Further, I propose an everyday ethics of interruption – building on the interruptions of Simpson and Fraser – that can inform research on and practices of intersectional solidarity-building in antipoverty movements.
the politics of redistribution From Nancy Fraser to the Occupy MovementIn a 2016 interview, Fraser explains that her work in the 1990s was specifically responding to the decline of a redistributive paradigm and the loss of the anti-capitalist ethos that initially characterized the New Social Movements of the 1960s.
But, Fraser says, tables have turned and in 2016 we find inequality at the forefront of Euro-American politics, reflecting a “different kind of balance” between recognition and redistribution claims. In fact, prominent critiques of Wall Street appear to be directly mirroring the rhetoric of the Occupy movement.
Fraser’s work offers a fruitful challenge to the inadequacy of any politics of recognition that does not address unjust material conditions. However, she fails to see that decolonial claims – which challenge colonial relations, colonial ways of thinking and the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous lands and resources – are not reducible to either recognition or material benefits granted by an outside authority.
aCknowledgements Thanks to my colleagues and teachers, many of whom have provided comments on the development of this research paper and poster: Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez, Cressida Heyes, Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Danielle Taschereau-Mamers, Jakeet Singh, Marta Bashovski, Joëlle Alice Michaud-Ouellet, Dax D’Orazio, Margot Challborn, Luke Sandle.
referencesFraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. New York: Routledge.Fraser, N. (2016). Clinton embodies a neoliberal kind of feminism which mostly benefits privileged women. [Interview with Álvaro Guzmán Bastida]. Retrieved from, http://ctxt.es/es/20160420/Politica/5538/fraser-feminism-Hillary-Clinton-neoliberal-feminism-redistribution-recognition-representation-Estados-Unidos-Entrevistas-The-English-Corner.htmPasternak, S. (2014). Occupy(ed) Canada: The political economy of Indigenous dispossession. In The Kino-nda-niimi Collective (Eds.), The Winter We Danced (40-43). Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books.Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler states. Durham: Duke University Press.Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1-40.Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2014). Unbecoming claims: Pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 811-818.Walia, H. (2014). Decolonizing together: Moving Beyond a Politics of Solidarity Toward a Practice of Decolonization. In The Kino-nda-niimi Collective (Eds.), The Winter We Danced (44-50). Winnipeg, MB: ARP.
contactRenée McBeth is a PhD Student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta ([email protected]).
SOLIDARITY AFTER OCCUPY: THINKING ABOUT FRAGMENTATION AND ALLIANCES IN ANTIPOVERTY ACTIVISM
by renée e. mcbeth
structural and political implicationsThis project focuses on ethical and methodological approaches as a basis for further research. In particular, I will conduct textual and participatory field research that considers the structural and political implications of decolonial and feminist theory with respect to redistribution. That is, what becomes of redistribution claims when one takes seriously decolonial claims?
Art by Tiago Hoisel. Retrieved from, http://genqueue.tumblr.com/post/34791813278/on-the-vacuous-ness-of-neoliberalism-as-a
Artist unknown. “Decolonize Wallstreet.” Retrieved from, https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.
Photo by Renée McBeth. Kym Hines with poster.
Photo by Renée McBeth
