We wondered what would be produced if we framed contestation as something other than a compulsion to resolve conflicting claims, desires, or views. Contestation on its own can simply be a state of being, a place where disagreement lives. Contestation is a space that many of us occupy as a location from which to pose questions. In this issue we attempt to inhabit contestation as constituting an unresolved continuum of exchange that might lead to more than a compromised reconciliation or the stagnation of incommensurability.
Read MoreContesting Catastrophes
More than a year now and more than ever, it seems, we need new ways to think about harm and redress.
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Contestations in Black Feminism
What is the Black in Black feminism? Is it broad enough to encompass Black women from all over the world, or does it refer only to African American women?
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photo by Gustavo Marinho (Source: mst.org.br)
The Battle for Land Reform: Contesting Coloniality and Capitalism
The battle for land reform is a persistent and intensifying dimension of politics and social life in the Global South where people are struggling to escape the claws of colonialism and capitalism. Here, the violent history of being stripped of the land and forced to sell labor power has left a legacy of enormous destruction both to the land and to society. Various movements are rising up to resist this injustice by advocating for the transformation of the relationship that people have with the land. In most cases this relationship has been, and continues to be, one of dispossession, exploitation and exclusion, as the people on the ground are often the most vulnerable and disregarded.
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Centering Black Swans: Embodied Research in Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology
It was horrible. I, Christabel, was standing in line at the post office, when I got a call on my cell from a doctor that I had never seen before. He was pinch-hitting for the doctor that I had gone to see the day before, because I thought I had the flu or mono. Anyway, this doctor whom I had never met before told me over the phone that I had “a type of cancer called lymphoma.” The call dropped. I had to race back to my desk at work to call him back. And the rest of what he said was just “blah, blah, blah” to me. To this day, I have never met the doctor who told me I had cancer.
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Figure 1 (Photo: Dolores Ochoa Associated Press)
Electoral Contestations in Ecuador and The Fear of a Black Planet
Ecuador’s recent presidential elections reveal how a state of contestation is not the exception but rather the norm of the social characterizing everyday life throughout the country at large. Is this not now perhaps the norm in all contemporary nation states?
Read MoreSelections from the Echo Morphology Series. Ink on cardboard. 2015. (Click to enlarge)
Echo Morphology
Call for Submissions to the Next Issue of Oppositional Conversations: Joy
by Oppositional Conversations Editorial Board
For the next issue of Oppositional Conversations, we seek contributions in all forms that explore and even define joy. During this time of isolation and social, political, cultural, and economic crises, is joy even possible? Might our understanding and definitions of it be changing? Joy is a fascinating and difficult term. It is something that is available to all of us—seemingly attainable, yet fleeting and elusive. While most of us at some point have experienced a “feeling of great pleasure and happiness,” what creates that feeling of joy’s uniqueness for each of us? We also want this issue to be about more than what brings us joy individually. What role does joy play in our lives and in the world collectively? What is our relationship to joy? Are we conduits of joy? Is it something we can seek for its own sake? In this issue we want to see if contributors’ examples, yearnings, and redefinitions of joy might combine to give new shape, direction, and purpose to our and our readers’ lives. We ask that you join us in this conversation. While we welcome all submissions in whatever form seems most appropriate to their content, we especially encourage those who work in the fields of religion and psychology to offer their takes on joy. Given what the whole world is experiencing, your thoughts on this theme seem indispensable to us.
We would love to receive your contributions by August 1st; please reach out to submissions@oppositionalconversations.org with any questions.