Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• ‘Do We Scare Ya’ Cuz, We’re Not Afraid To Fuck?’: Queer-feminist Punk Countercultures, Theory, Art and Action

  Katharina Wiedlack

  • Abstract

    The article investigates areas of knowledge production in contemporary queer-feminist punk countercultures in/from the US and draws a connection from countercultural accounts to academic anti-social queer theory. Based on the thesis that queer-feminist punk–countercultures, bands, musicians, writers and organizers–can be understood as a political movement, their productions—lyrics, writing, sound and performances—will be seen as a form of queer-feminist activism and agency. The main argument developed in the article is that queer-feminist punk countercultural agents do not only engage with queer and feminist politics, as well as academic theory, but also produce queer-feminist political theory—a more or less coherent set of ideas to analyze, explain and counter oppressive social structures, as well as explicit and open violence and oppression. Queer-feminist punk musicians combine decolonial and antiracist accounts with their specific punk philosophy of anti-social queerness or queer negativity. Lyrical content, and writing will be analyzed to show examples of queer-feminist anti-social accounts of punk music. Relating such queer-feminist punk negativity to academic concepts and scholarly work, it will be shown how punk rock is capable of negotiating and communicating academic queer-feminist theoretical positions in a non-academic setting. Moreover, it will be proven that queer-feminist punk does not only negotiate, translate and appropriate academic accounts, but also produces similar negative and repoliticized queer-feminist theories without any direct inspiration through academic discourses. Furthermore, it will be proposed that queer-feminist punk communities accomplish what academic queer theory following the anti-social turn often does not: they transform their radically anti-social queer positions into (models for) liveable activism/artivism.

    Keywords

    Anti-Social Queer Theory, Queercore, Riot Grrrl, Punk Rock, Queer-feminism, Artivism, Radical Theory, Music, Activism

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  • pp. 15–37

• Gender as a Category of Analysis: Reconciling Feminist Theory with Feminist Methodology

  Charlotte Wu

  • Abstract

    Gender theory is not exactly feminist theory, but in many ways it builds directly upon its assumptions and innovations. This essay explores the ways in which the category of analysis ‘gender’ reconciles its heritage of political consciousness and activism with its place in a more scientific or philosophical discourse, and attempts to demonstrate how it can remain indispensable as a political and ethical tool. To do this, it discusses and challenges competing narratives of oppression and postmodernist accounts of social reality. Through a discussion of the ‘non-human person’, this article concludes by questioning the value of the ‘human’ as a productive category of analysis, and argues that the destabilising of disciplines which the study of ‘gender’ provokes may also serve to unmask inherited assumptions about the analytical concept of the individual subject.

    Keywords

    gender, Feminism, Animals, Persons, Oppression

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  • pp. 38–53

• (Re-)Occupy Critique! The Condition of Theory and Praxis in Contemporary American Academia

  Marco Briziarelli

  • Abstract

    Political activism should not be taken for granted in academia; it is a project that requires the creation of an adequate environment for critique and action. That is because, rephrasing Gramsci’s recommendation (Gramsci 1971, 175), social change needs both the practical ‘optimism of the will’ and the theoretical social diagnostics provided by the ‘pessimism of the intellect.’ Based on such assumptions, the paper points out the necessity, on the one hand, to go beyond an idealist conceptualization of the intellectual and instead to look materially at the field of action of academics, and, on the other, to problematize the currently dominant theoretical understanding of critique.

    Keywords

    Theory, Praxis, Critique, Post-Structuralism, Occupy Wall Street, Gramsci

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  • pp. 54–79

• Neoliberalism and Depoliticisation in the Academy: Understanding the ‘New Student Rebellions’

  Leon Sealey-Huggins and André Pusey

  • Abstract

    Since 2009 there has been an upsurge in political activity in and around the UK, as well as in some European and American universities. These ‘new student rebellions’ have displayed levels of radicalism and political activism seemingly unprecedented among recent generations of students. Broadly speaking, the intensification of this activity can be understood as being directly related to ongoing neoliberal reforms of education, a process intensified by the global financial crisis. In this article we seek to consider some of the detail of the emergence of these rebellions, and argue that they can be interpreted as part of resistance to the neoliberal tendencies in contemporary social life. As such, we argue that a depoliticised tendency accompanies the introduction of, and resistance to, neoliberal mechanisms in Higher Education (HE). As activists in groups who have adopted more creative and explicitly politically antagonistic forms of activism, we suggest that such forms might be more productive arenas for our energies if we want to challenge the neoliberal and depoliticised root causes of these conflicts.

    Keywords

    Post-politics, Neoliberalism, Higher Education, NUS, Student Protest, Creative Resistance

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  • pp. 80–99

• Researching DIY Cultures: Towards a Situated Ethical Practice for Activist-Academia

  Julia Downes, Maddie Breeze and Naomi Griffin

  • Abstract

    The empirical study of DIY culture and feminist cultural activism is a flourishing interdisciplinary research area particularly in the USA, Canada, Australia and UK. This has enabled a growth in participant-researchers doing research on their own DIY cultures and activist communities of belonging. Tensions occur here for the participant-researcher in relation to conventional data collection methods, ethical and moral decisions and modes of research dissemination. This article develops discussions of dilemmas experienced by the authors during doctoral research projects on DIY punk, roller derby and queer feminist music cultures. We detail the possibilities and tensions met when the participant-researcher encounters existing subcultural theories, ethical codes of practice, data collection methods and the dissemination of academic research. In addition we offer insights into the under-documented emotional impacts and moments of crisis the participant-researcher needs to attend to when carrying out research with/in personal and political communities of belonging. In conclusion, we offer a series of recommendations for a situated ethical practice for research with/in DIY cultures in relation to engaged data generation methods, flexible ethical thinking and communities of practice.

    Keywords

    DIY Culture, Feminist Cultural Activism, Research Ethics, Participant-Researcher, Activist-Academia

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  • pp. 100–124

• Defamiliarising Passivity with the Disabled Subject: Activism, Academia and the Lived Experience of Impairment

  Harriet Cooper

  • Abstract

    This paper explores the social construction of activism and academia in the contemporary UK context. Unlike activism, academia is not always regarded in mainstream culture as being politically engaged. The paper interrogates this state of affairs using Sara Ahmed’s de-naturalisation of the terms ‘active’ and ‘passive’ (Ahmed 2010, 208-210). It also draws on insights from disability studies to reflect on the social significance of passivity. With reference to various sources, including my own experience of growing up with a physical impairment, I argue that the day-to-day lived experience of impairment defamiliarises the notions of activity and passivity. For many disabled people, a great deal of activity goes into those tiny, everyday tasks that are framed as the ‘passive’ ones we need to complete in order to reach the active, productive ones. I propose the term ‘actively passive’ to denote the conscious performance of actions which are undertaken unconsciously and spontaneously by most people. Politically engaged academia might also, I suggest, be described as ‘actively passive’ in that it labours to de-naturalise those positions and ideas that are taken for granted in mainstream culture. I propose that academia in the humanities and social sciences might both learn from the embodied experiences of the disabled subject and that, in its processes and practices, it can also be understood as being aligned and allied with this subject.

    Keywords

    Activism, Academia, Passive, Active, Disability

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  • pp. 125–137

• Investigating Genderless Utopias: Exposing the Sexual Harassment of Female Protestors in the Egyptian Uprisings of 2011

  Emily Miles

  • Abstract

    Political uprisings and ‘democratic’ mobilisations utilise discourses of freedom and democracy in order to oppose social injustice and threats to equality. Yet within the mobilisations themselves, discourse constructs legitimate and illegitimate subjects through gendered power relations and sexualised violence. During the Tahrir Square uprisings in Egypt in 2011, activists attempted to oppose tyrannical state power by reframing the legitimacy of their protest through expressing themselves as ‘The People’. Whilst they successfully brought about the fall of Mubarak’s regime, elitism and social divisions that dominated Egyptian society failed to be significantly challenged. Feminist academic theory has previously offered insight into how nation states construct legitimate subjects through hegemonic patriarchal power. Events in Egypt demonstrate that attempts to create ‘genderless’ spaces free from social divisions can in fact mask prevailing relations of oppressive power. If political activists were to draw upon feminist academic theory, and feminist theory to transcend the academic vacuum, each may be able to address their own limitations and cross the binary in order to attain more lasting social transformation.

    Keywords

    gender, Egypt, Uprising, Mubarak, Tahrir, Sexual Violence, Feminism, Activism, Utopia, Harassment, Protestors, Elitism

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  • pp. 138–149

Book Reviews

• IMPORT – EXPORT –TRANSPORT. Queer Theory, Queer Critique and Activism in Motion edited by Sushila Mesquita, Maria Katharina Wiedlack and Katrin Lasthofer

  Evelien Geerts

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  • pp. 150–154

• Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism by Judith Butler

  Maya Nitis

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  • pp. 155–158

• On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmend

  Anna Kuslits

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  • pp. 159–162