Cultures, Activisms and Cultural Changes
Helena Ferreira
Maria Manuel Baptista
Activisms can be considered one of the many forms of civic engagement in which an individual can participate (Jeong, 2013), considering that the same individual can adopt different forms of activism in different protest events, depending on the political cause (Svensson, J, et al, 2012).
Despite the existence of various definitions of “activisms”, we identify with the Deleuzian-inspired proposal defended by Svirsky, who states that “activism is defined (…) as involving local instigations of new series of elements that intersect with the real, generating new enunciations, experimentations and collective investigations, which erode both the good sense and the common sense and make the structures move away from their sedimented identities” (2010, p. 163).
Activisms thus emerge in our societies as a form of resistance to instituted policies, of defense of human rights and of struggle for social justice, thus seeking to directly achieve their objectives, trying to persuade and/or appeal to the instituted powers to promote changes. They thus contradict the Western normative ethics, which tries to impose a democratic framework that limits and represses all nomadic forms of resistance (Svirsky, 2010).
The insistence of Cultural Studies on understanding power organizations, but also the possibilities of “struggle, resistance, and change” (Grossberg, 1997), in various ways and at different times, in order to respond to the ethical-political questions of everyday life, makes this area a locus of conflict par excellence. Baptista (2009, p. 453) even claims that Cultural Studies assume a “civic and political commitment to studying the world, in order to be able to intervene in it with more rigor and effectiveness, building knowledge with social relevance (…), based on the principles of cultural democracy.”
Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, we intend, in the context of the IX Conference in Cultural Studies: Cultures, Activisms and Cultural Changes, to continue to deepen the reflection on the polemical and sometimes tense relations between activisms and academia. Indeed, it is not without reason that Kathy Hytten (2017) considers that bringing activism themes to academia may inadvertedly echo the oppressive conventions prevalent in Western academia, which defines what should or should not be valued, what can or cannot be debated in academic circles.
It should be emphasized that this conference seeks to debate activisms and cultural changes from a post-structural and decolonial theoretical context, which seeks to overthrow and/or decenter the “structures.” In this sense, we have abandoned the pretension of exhaustiveness, systematicity, and scientific universality, which seeks to transform the classrooms of academia into ‘sacred’ spaces of solipsistic knowledge production. On the contrary, what we aim for is to understand and deepen the rhizomatic flows expressed by activisms, establishing a commitment to contingency and openness to the social reality where cultural changes occur, so that we can move towards “critical work, political opposition and even historical change” (Grossberg, 2010, p. 8-9).
Svirsky (2010), drawing an analogy between revolutions and activisms, argues that revolutionaries always exist in many dimensions, in the midst of what they try to escape from and fight against, intertwined with what they intend to achieve and the material they begin to experience. The passage is what is revolutionary, not the final arrival at a new rhythm. The difference for activisms is that they are not this passage of rhythms; on the contrary, they are temporary sub-rhythms of denunciation, striking the first rhythm, from which they sculpt a becoming in new territories. Raunig (2007) explains in a metaphor: “they are more the first steps in an apparently new terrain, placed on the old terrain, fighting against this old terrain and using it at the same time to transform it into something different” (Raunig 2007, pp. 41–42).
The relevance of this theme is justified by its current importance. Never before have activisms been so dynamic and visible. In post-industrial and neoliberal societies, expressions of activisms have taken much broader and more pluralistic forms, supported and even encouraged by digital media and equipment (Changfoot, 2006; Fuad-Luke, 2009; Campos, Pereira & Simões, 2016). Indeed, neoliberal policies have created an incredibly contradictory scenario for activism, resistance, and urban politics in general (Long, 2013): the neoliberalization of cities has contributed both to the creation of a more hostile environment for activism and to its dissemination and much more global articulation of protests (Mayer, 2009).
In recent decades, laws, proposed laws, or other individual and/or collective attempts, by the State or other organizations and/or individuals, which have become controversial and detrimental to rights or even reversing acquired rights, have been met with waves of activism in response, demonstrating a strength that opposes institutionalized and normalized power, or with pretensions to be such, to the communities they represent. In the current cultural context, these waves quickly reach everywhere, whether through traditional media or through social networks.
And if indeed, activisms are the conatus of revolutions (Svirsky, 2010), behind these waves come other waves, because as soon as activists achieve the goals for which they fought, they distance themselves from that struggle and move on to another, since “the power of creation as constitutive power remains faithful to the eternal return of difference and moves away from the traps of constituted power” (Svirsky, 2010, p. 169).
Research on this subject faces enormous challenges in trying to understand the wide range of actions and issues that activisms develop, as well as the motivations that lead activists to engage in the multiple causes they defend. It is indeed an intrinsically controversial theme, both epistemologically, politically, and academically, whose points of collaboration, inflection, and friction we want to discuss in the context of the IX Conference in Cultural Studies: Cultures, Activisms and Cultural Changes.
The reflection we want to promote aims to explore the following thematic axes along which activisms vary profoundly, constituting a variable, ever-changing geography:
- Activisms that contest existing powers, but also those that operate within formal political systems;
- Traditional activisms versus more innovative and disruptive activisms;
- Digital activisms and the relationship between online and offline;
- Methodological plurality, both in the form of participation in activist actions and in research on activisms;
- The responsibilities of researchers for the practical implications of their involvement in research on activisms.
The theme proposed for the IX International Conference in Cultural Studies: Cultures, Activisms and Cultural Changes covers a huge variety of macro and micro-social concerns, aiming to understand activisms in cultural and specific contexts. We therefore invite researchers and activists to reflect on them, in theoretical, methodological, empirical, and artistic production dimensions, contributing with original and innovative works and/or interventions.
References
Baptista, M.M. (2009) “Estudos culturais: o quê e o como da investigação”, Carnets, Cultures littéraires: nouvelles performances et développement, nº spécial, automne / hiver, 451-461.
Campos, R., Pereira, I & Simões, J.A. (2016). Ativismo digital em Portugal: um estudo exploratório. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas [Online], 82, consultado em 19 de fevereiro 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/spp/2460
Changfoot, N. (2006) Local activism and neoliberalism: performing neoliberal citizenship as resistance, Studies in Political Economy 80: 129 – 149.
Fuad-Luke, A. (2009). Design activism : beautiful strangeness for a sustainable world. London: Earthscan.
Grossberg, L. (1997b). Bringing it all back home. Essays on Cultural Studies, Durham: Duke University Press.
Grossberg, L. (2010). Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hytten, K. (2014). Teaching as and for activism: Challenges and possibilities. Philosophy of Education Archive, 385-394.
Jeong, H. O. (2013). From civic participation to political participation. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 24(4), 1138-1158.
Long, J. (2013) Sense of place and place-based activism in the neoliberal city. The case of ‘weird’ resistance. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 17 (1): 52 – 67.
Mayer, M. (2009). “The “Right to the City” in the Context of Shifting Mottos of Urban Social Movements.” City 13 (2–3): 362–374.
Raunig, G. (2007). Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century, trans. Aileen Derieg, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Svensson, J., Neumayer, C., Banfield-Mumb, A., & Schossboeck, J. (2012). What kind of activist are you? Positioning, power and identity in political online activism in Europe. In N. Edelmann, & P. Parycek (Eds.), CeDem2012. Conference on E-Democracy and Open Government (pp. 165-177). Donau-Universität-Krems.
Svirsky, M. (2010). Defining Activism. In Svirsky, M. (Ed.) Deleuze and Political Activism. Deleuze Studies Volume 4: 2010 supplement: v, pp. 163-182.