New Issue of Affinities on Radical Imagination
Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action
Vol 4, No 2 (2010): “What is the Radical Imagination?”
This issue of Affinities focuses on the importance of radical imagination to radical social change.
We step in to the terrain of the imagination cognizant of its promises and its pitfalls. On the one hand, imagination brings to mind utopian fancy, a dangerous and demobilizing escapism, and forms of collective or subjective delusion which perpetuate the status-quo. On the other, the ability to imagine the world, social institutions and human (and non-human) relationships otherwise is vital to any radical project. Indeed, as numerous commentators and theorists point out, we cant do without the radical imagination, both on the level of our movements and on the level of our everyday lives – the ability to believe that things can be better -- is a key part of our social, psychological and spiritual lives (for better or for worse). But even if we acknowledge that we cant do without the radical imagination that still doesn't tell us what it is or what we might be able to do with it. These are the kinds of provocations we take up in this issue of Affinities, but without suggesting we or our contributors have anything approaching definitive answers (indeed, definitive answers may not be possible). We do, however, have an abundance of questions.
Editorials/Introductions
What is the radical imagination? A Special Issue
Max Haiven, Alex Khasnabish
Interventions: Struggles
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Precariousness, Catastrophe and Challenging the Blackmail of the
Imagination
Franco BIFO Berardi
What is Radical Imagination? Indigenous Struggles in Canada
Taiaiake Alfred
Commodity Feminism and the Unilever Corporation: Or, How the Corporate
Imagination Appropriates Feminism
Julie E. Dowsett
Unfixing Imaginings of the City: Art, Gentrification, and Cultures of
Surveillance
Phanuel Antwi, Amber Dean
Interventions: Provocations
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Other Presents: Imagining the Human and Beyond
Larissa Lai
The Uneven Development of Radical Imagination
Justin Paulson
A Radical and Elitist Imagination? Political Paternities and Alternatives
in the History of Ideas
Chris Churchill
A few notes on the question, what is radical imagination?
Petra Rethmann
Dancing Through the Crisis
Randy Martin
Interventions: Openings
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Anarchist Imaginaries
Allan Antliff
Re-Imagining Revolution
Judy Rebick
Giant Whispers: Narrative Power, Radical Imagination and a Future Worth
Fighting For…
Patrick Reinsborough
Place against Empire: Understanding Indigenous Anti-Colonialism
Glen Coulthard
Interventions: Commons
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Beyond Protest: Radical Imagination and the Global Justice Movement
Rachel Elaine Strasinger
Participatory Budgeting and the Radical Imagination: In Europe but not in
Canada?
Terry Maley
The Disruptive Time of the Gift: (Radical) Imagination at Work in Free and
Open Source Software
Michael Truscello