Impulse to Act: A New Anthropology of Resistance and Social Justice

289 Pages·2016·3.72 MB·English

by  Othon Alexandrakis (ed.)

Impulse to Act

Impulse to Ac t
A New Anthropology of Resistance
and Social Justice
edited by Othon Alexandrakis
Indiana university press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana university press
Office of scholarly publishing
Herman B Wells library 350
1320 east 10th street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 usA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2016 by Othon Alexandrakis
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
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without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association
of American university presses’ Resolution on permissions consti-
tutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National standard for Information
sciences—permanence of paper for printed library materials,
ANsI Z39.48-1992.
manufactured in the united states of America
cataloging information is available from the library of congress.
IsBN 978-0-253-02278-3 (cloth)
IsBN 978-0-253-02311-7 (paperback)
IsBN 978-0-253-02326-1 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
For my colleagues and friends who have helped to make
this volume possible.

let those who heavy feel
The cupreous hand of fear
under slavery’s yoke live;
mettle and virtue is what
Freedom wants.
she (and myth belies the mind of truth)
Gave wings to Icarus.
But he,
still winged,
even though he fell
And drowned
In the sea,
Fell from high heights
And thus died free.
And if you become
The slaughter of a tyrant
With no honor,
Do think the grave as a horror.
— “Fourth Ode, to samos” Andreas Kalvos
(translated by Neni panourgiá)

contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Resistance Reconsidered • Othon Alexandrakis 1
Part I. Affect as Political Condition
1 Being and Doing politics: moral Ontologies and ethical Ways
of Knowing at the end of the cold War • Jessica Greenberg 19
2 The Affective echoes of an Overwhelming life: The Demand
for legal Recognition and the Vicious circle of Desire in the case
of Queer Activism in Istanbul • Eirini Avramopoulou 41
3 emergenc(i)es in the Fields: Affective composition and countercamps
against the exploitation of migrant Farm labor in Italy
• Irene Peano 63
4 cosmologicopolitics: Vitalistic cosmology meets Biopower
• James D. Faubion 89
5 surreal capitalism and the Dialectical economies of precarity
• Neni Panourgiá 112
Part II. Agency as Ethical Condition
6 Intolerants: politics of the Ordinary in Karachi, pakistan
• Tania Ahmad 135
7 Negative space: unmovement and the study of Activism
When There Is No Action • Cymene Howe 161
8 What should Be Done? Art and political possibility in Russia
• Petra Rethmann 183
9 The multilinearity of protest: understanding New social
movements through Their events, trends, and Routines
• John Postill 192