readings from constructing the anti-globalisation movement

see diani, "the concept of social movement" in Readings in contemporary political sociology, on the fact that the term is not well-defined
see melucci, nomads of the present (70-73), and challenging codes (113-116), on constructivist approaches to movements, meaning that social movements are constituted through movement activity, they do not empirically pre-exist that activity; also the need to look at the "subterranean dimension of activism" (eschle, 65)
see dixon "finding hope after seattle" and crass "beyond the whiteness" on marginalized forms of activism within the movement

readings from Queer Latinidad

alarcon, "conjugating subjects" in mapping multiculturalism
chela sandoval, "feminist forms of agency and oppositional consciousness" in provoking agents
butler, "discussion" in the identity in question

also see butler bodies that matter, 228

title revision

ok, larry rightly pointed out that my use of the term "the anarchist movement" in the title of my diss is problematic. i never intended the "the" or "movement" to be anything but provisional and ironized, but that is complicated to have to explain right off the bat, and why invite problems from the start?

sooo, what about this:

The Practice of Everyday Politics: Culture, Lifestyle, and Identity Among the Anarchists

it's a clever little reference to the book "A Girl Among the Anarchists"... but is it too clever, and does it still introduce the "the" problem? i could say "among contemporary American anarchists" but that seems way dry, plus then you get the "american" problem, and if you're going to start making distinctions about who/what you're trying to represent, it just seems to reify/mask the whole representation problem that's always going to plague you, no matter how specific you try to get. bah, maybe the subtitle should just be "anarchist culture, lifestyle, and identity" though i don't like using anarchist as an adjective in that way because then it becomes unclear whether you're referring to a organizational structure (anarchic) or an identity label, which is more the way i'm using the term.

edit 1/30/10:

ok, i've been thinking about taking anarchists out of the spotlight a little bit - obviously not as far as content, since they are my object of study, but trying to convey that this is a dissertation that is trying to theorize lifestyle politics in a broader sense. sooo what if it was just The Practice of Everyday Politics: Lifestyle, Identity, and Radical Activism

i almost want to have it be "and/as radical activism" but i think those playing-with-words titles are really tiresome, as much as i also think they are good at conveying complexity and precision of meaning.

today's progress

dove back into chapter 1 today. mapped out a few things i want/need to flesh out, though i haven't conceptualized the radical reconstruction of the intro that may need to happen. still want to bounce my reorganization ideas off sarah (and larry?). realized the methodology section is actually more ok than i thought, though there were a few things i needed to clarify and expand. i also wrote up three appendices (a list of interviewees, a list of interview questions, and the info sheet i gave participants).

i probably won't get very much work done tomorrow, but i think i need to need to listen to the defense audio, and maybe i will feel plucky enough to do it if i am at school surrounded by people?

friday will be a big working day, and saturday too i think. my goal for the week is to fill in the existing holes in the intro (not taking the restructuring into account yet) and to listen to the defense.

sunday is the LA anarchist bookfair. i haven't been to an anarchist event in a long time - it might be good to get "back in the field" as it were.

(side note: when i was doing my interviewee list, i discovered an email interview from september 2008 i had never printed out and coded. what a dummy!)

defense feedback

still need to get up the gumption to listen to the audio recording of my defense, but for now i can start thinking about the feedback and doing the minor revisions at least.

- the anarchist "movement"
larry is "not persuaded" that there *is* an anarchist movement. while i certainly agree that it is neither centralized nor institutionalized, it's clear to me that a coherent movement does exist right now. so, i obviously need to do a better job of convincing my reader that this is the case. i may hit up the anarchist academics listserv for suggestions of sources who make the case better than i could on my own.

- reference system
larry haaaates the way i used chicago style, because you end up endnoting every reference, only some of which have any further explanation other than the source of the citation. may be worth using a different system, one which uses author-date in-text.

- need to put my research questions and "roadmap" more up front - don't keep the reader in suspense, lay it all out

- lay out my own identity, position, investment in the research. i am totally happy to do this, but i always fear self-reflexivity shading over into narcissism. better to err on the heavy side right now, i guess.

- appendix of interviewees, so reader doesn't have to remember who's who

- make stakes of project clearer, explain why it's important to study anarchists right now

- give historical context of anarchist movement

- organize historical material by theme rather than chronology (in fact, i think i'm going to scrap the history chapter altogether, and incorporate examples from it where they help to illuminate particular themes)

- keep terms discrete (i think this means subculture vs community vs movement, etc. but not totally sure)

- larry really wants me to think about lifestyle politics as a life-cycle phenomenon, as a youth thing; i think this is worth thinking about, but critically, explaining why it is or can seem like a youth thing, rather than assuming it naturally is always going to be associated with youth

- karen wants me to explore the three prongs of "lifestyle"; 1) as a marketing tool; 2) as care of the self; 3) as an activist tactic, the anarchist "recuperation" of lifestyle

- larry says there needs to be more "stuff"; karen interprets this as more analysis, letting my own voice come through more in addition giving a voice to my data and to the theorists i use

- overall sense that i need to be less afraid to be critical, need to use a stronger voice in leveling my arguments, make them *my* arguments; need to in fact *have* a clear argument

i know there was more feedback, but this is a place to start for now.

edit 1/21/10

- karen: think about why you're using butler and performance (after there has been so much critique of her work). so need to read more of that critique i guess.

- distinguishing between lifestyle politics and "real politics" and then "lifestyle politics" and just good old "style politics" and then taking a strong position on that. inna reminded me of this one. i think i do briefly distinguish between lifestyle politics and real politics, but i could definitely spend more time sussing out how this plays out within anarchism (i had that in an earlier draft of a chapter i think, but it got cut out along the way). as for the style politics thing, i have no memory of it! but i could certainly mention it more in the introduction/in the newly imagined self-presentation chapter.

- be specific about how i define queer, which version of queer i'm using. karen felt like i was homogenizing it, and i think she meant not taking into account queer of color. would be good to revisit readings from ENG 630 for this.

edit 1/28/10:

-be specific about which anarchists i'm talking about, how i define "the anarchist movement"; i need to distinguish between anarchism as an identity and as a movement, and specify which one am i talking about (identity, clearly)

18 days

i turn in my diss to my committee on the 7th. sarah has said she'll read everything over this weekend and let me know what to work on in the remaining time. this means i need to get the introduction done in the next two days, as well as fill in the minor gaps in chapters 2 and 5.

hopefully clarifying what i've already written in the first two chapters will make chapter 4 more doable, as i think i got tripped up trying to summarize a lot of theory there and it turns out i already addressed it earlier. i need especially to take the theories i start with in the lit review and the data i turned up in the historiography/genealogy, and have that direct what i cover in chapter 4. hopefully i can wrap that up in a few days time, which will leave me a week and a half or so to deal with whatever last minute things sarah thinks need to get in there before the defense, and to write the conclusion.

organizing the lit review is completely excruciating and horrible, btw. i was supposed to finish it today but it chewed me up and spit me out. i think tomorrow i will probably have to leave the house and not allow myself to return until it's done.

another article

Never mind the bollocks: the punk rock politics of global communication
KEVIN C. DUNN
Review of International Studies (2008), 34:193-210

another reading list

next time i have a free month, need to do a crash course on authenticity. this is probably the kind of thing that should happen BEFORE i turn in my dissertation, but that doesn't seem likely at this point.

see citations in Jackson's Real Black for a million books to read on this topic.

next on my reading list

Queer Politics and Political Performance, by Ben Shepard

http://www.amazon.com/Political-Performance-Routledge-Advances-Sociology/dp/0415960967

also, obviously, Graeber's new book, Direct Action. sadly i think both will have to wait until after my defense, though both would probably be super helpful for the dissertation itself. it's all about the book revisions at this point.

writing abstracts makes me want to die

wrote this up for job letters and fellowship applications. pretty sure i need to be more concrete in describing anarchist lifestyle politics and less concrete in laying out the organization in the last paragraph. but it's something.

Title: The Practice of Everyday Politics: Culture, Lifestyle, and Identity in the Anarchist Movement.

This dissertation is a multi-level exploration of the mutually constitutive relationship between lifestyle practices, political identity, and movements for social change. My findings are based on qualitative research into the contemporary American anarchist movement, using methods of interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis. I examine this political movement in order to get at broad issues that are of concern to scholars of communication and culture: how we make ourselves and communicate our identities to others, how the norms of our communities influence our attitudes and behaviors, how we attempt to act ethically within systems of power, whether there is room for resistance within individualist consumer culture. My analysis draws heavily on Foucaultian theories of subjectivity and power, which understand both identity and resistance as simultaneously produced and constrained by social discourse.

This work bridges micro-, meso- and macro-levels of analysis in order to make sense of the way lifestyle functions in and for radical political movements. It is an attempt to explicate the logic and implications of the slogan “the personal is political” for dissident individuals and movements that operate both within and at the margins of contemporary, neoliberal culture. At the micro-level, I examine anarchists’ individual practices and attitudes toward lifestyle and consumption. I am concerned with the way in which one’s self and everyday activities are politicized and belabored in the name of radical social change. At the meso-level, I consider intra-group dynamics and mechanisms of social discipline, which work to generate and sustain lifestyle norms as collective political praxis. And at the macro-level, I situate anarchist lifestyle politics within larger cultural, political, and economic systems, showing both how they are shaped by these systems and how they might work to alter them.

The project starts with a genealogy of “lifestyle politics” in American political movements, focusing on the Old Left, the New Left and hippie counterculture, Black Power, women’s liberation, and queer liberation movements. Having provided this historical frame, I move on to documenting and theorizing the lifestyle practices typically adopted by contemporary anarchists. I then examine the disciplinary mechanisms through which the culture of the anarchist movement produces individuals as anarchist-identified subjects. Following this, I interrogate the individualistic nature of lifestyle politics and consider the potential of such tactics to bring about radical social change. Finally, I explore the intra-movement social dynamics that stem from the politicization of lifestyle practices, many of which echo what came before in earlier radical movements. I also present a focused case study of the construction of sexuality within the anarchist movement, which is useful as a specific site in which to analyze dynamics of identity construction, performance, social discipline, and political strategy within the movement. Ultimately I conclude that lifestyle can be wielded strategically within collective resistance projects, and indeed that it must be if it is to function as anything more than an individualizing and often divisive political tactic.