Authors Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven discuss their book on the radical imagination and its relevance in current times. They explore the tensions within activist groups, the concept of world building, waves of social movements, and reflect on the legacy of their book.
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Quick takeaways
Social movements challenge power structures and envision a radical future.
Traditional social movement research often fails to recognize grassroots organizing.
The rise of the far right highlights the need for a refined understanding of the radical imagination.
Deep dives
The Importance of Autonomous Social Movements
Autonomous social movements play a crucial role in driving social change and addressing important issues. These movements, such as the movement for black lives and indigenous sovereignty, have a significant impact on society. They challenge traditional power structures and envision a new radical future. Sociologists sometimes misread these movements, but understanding their radical imagination is vital. The book 'The Radical Imagination' by Alex Khasnabish and Max Haven explores social movement theory and highlights the importance of these movements in creating a more just and equitable society.
Challenging Traditional Social Movement Research
Traditional social movement research often approaches movements as objects of study and fails to recognize the grassroots, community-based nature of politics. This stems from a historical perspective that prioritized formal institutions and downplayed the significance of alternative, autonomous organizing. However, this limited perspective neglects the power dynamics, inequalities, and injustices present in society. The authors of 'The Radical Imagination' criticize this approach and advocate for a new form of research that supports social movements rather than exploiting them. They emphasize the importance of engaging in transversal conversations and fostering the radical imagination to envision and create alternative futures.
The Radical Imagination and the Rise of the Right
The rise of the far right poses a challenge to social movement scholars and highlights the need to reevaluate the concept of the radical imagination. While the right-wing has demonstrated an imaginative approach to their vision of the future, it is essential to distinguish their ideas and actions from those aligned with movements for collective liberation. The appropriation of the term 'radical imagination' by the right should not undermine its significance, but rather prompts a need for more rigorous analysis and refinement of the term. Recognizing the failures of the left to capture the attention of people in a broad-based way, there is a call to facilitate meaningful conversations that allow individuals to envision and build more humane, democratic, and sustainable futures.
The Importance of a Partial and Imperfect Perspective
Crafting a story of the world only based on the perspectives of those who are not negatively impacted or served by the world can lead to a limited perspective. The speaker emphasizes that our discipline and philosophical roots determine what we are trained to see. By focusing only on what is designed and visible, we miss out on the complexities and richness of social movements and the everyday actions that occur within them.
Social Movements as Laboratories of World Building
Social movements, despite often failing to achieve their promised objectives, play a crucial role in generating traction for alternatives and building new ways of imagining the world. The speaker highlights that social movements are not just about performative politics, but also about mundane, everyday practices that challenge the replication of oppressive structures. They serve as spaces for individuals to build friendships, relationships, and even whole worlds within the movement. Movements are seen as both spaces of world building and spaces of contradictions.
Professors Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven are authors of a book calledThe Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity(Bloomsbury, 2014). Their book examines how social movements imagine (and build) radical new futures. Additionally, the book critically intervenes in broader social movement theory, and suggests new approaches for scholar-activists.
As part of a recent episode of Darts and Letters, “Mutual Aid & the Anarchist Radical Imagination,” we spoke to Alex and Max about how these ideas help us make sense of autonomous and anarchist-styled movement building. However, we had a much broader conversation about the book, its legacy, and how we should understand it today. That longer conversation is here.
We cover: the history of social movement theory, how it (mis)understands prefigurative politics, and how to make sense of the burgeoning far right. In a time where reactionary movements offer radical visions – space colonization, transhumanist enhancement, life extension, and more – how are we to make sense of the radical imagination? Do they have a kind of new reactionary radical imagination, or is it more of the same? We discuss.
