"Constituent Imagination:

Research + Resistance in the Global Justice Movement"

Over the past ten years the various tendrils of the global justice
movement have developed a multiplicity of new forms of social resistance.
From occupied factories and neighborhood assemblies in Argentina to
raucous UK street parties and Italian social centers, these new forms of
resistance and organizing have blurred, questioned, and broken down
notions of political action and organization. Far from the “end of
history” predicted in 1989, the circulation and spread of autonomous
struggles and politics worldwide has proclaimed loudly “we are
everywhere.” These forms of social protagonism are developing alternatives
to a neoliberal world in the organization of resistance, constructing new
possibilities through the constitutive power of lived imagination.Just as we use narratives to construct and deconstruct our social world,
so narratives about forms of politics open up or delimit possibilities for
organization. But the relation of radical academics and intellectuals and
the social movements we work with (or more often talk about with little
real connection) has had a tenuous and not always positive history. Far
too often radical theorists have used their knowledge or ideas to claim
leadership roles and positions of power within movements, attempting to
control and direct through vanguard structures, leading to many problems
despite their positive intentions. The practices of the interwoven strands
of the global justice movement, creating and enacting horizontal networks
instead of top-down structures like states, parties, or corporation,
demand that radical theorists and academics critically rethink their role
in and relation to movements, and the nature of intellectual practice
itself.

This volume seeks contributions of essays and interviews as well visual
contributions that explore the relation between research, resistance, and
organization occurring in the global justice movement. That is, we wish to
seek out the voices not of those who comment upon organizing from afar or
from above, but engage in research and investigation from an engaged
perspective and political praxis, people who take seriously the
Zapatistas’ concept of walking while asking questions. Contributors are
encouraged to be creative with format and style (think beyond the generic
academic paper format!). Please send your proposal of 500 words or less to
stevphen@mutualaid.org by January 15th, 2004.

Constituent Imagination: Research + Resistance in the Global Justice Movement

Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Leicester, Centre for
Philosophy and Political Economy) & David Graeber (Yale University,
Anthropology)

Website: www.constituentimagination.net

For more information please contact Stevphen Shukaitis by e-mailing
stevphen@mutualaid.org or calling +44 (0) 870 015 6097.