"All we have is means”: Ursula Le Guin’s imperfectionist anarchism
12. Oktober 2023, 16.00 bis 18.00 Uhr Kunstuniversität Linz, Hauptplatz 6, Hörsaal C
Die Abteilung Künstlerische Wissenspraktiken lädt zum Gastvortrag von Alexis Shotwell.
Anarchists have long argued that there is a vital connection between means and ends, that how we do things matters to what we can accomplish in collective movements for liberation. In this paper, I think with science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, putting her articulation of the importance of process in conversation with theorists writing about prefiguration, anarchism, and collective transformation. Le Guin foregrounds the importance of attending to how we do things, formulating any work toward a goal as something that will continue beyond that goal, continual becoming as a core aspect of revolutionary work, and continual questioning as a basis for life.
Alexis Shotwell’s work focuses on complexity, complicity, and collective transformation. A professor at Carleton University, on unceded Algonquin land, she is the co-investigator for the AIDS Activist History Project (aidsactivisthistory.ca), and the author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.
Alexis Shotwell