Peripheral politics
During this first session of encountering the transcribed conversations together, borrowed the idea of peripheral politics from AbdouMaliq Simone[1] as a reminder to stay in the middle, and to not fall for the suggestion of a collective analysis. We proposed 'refrains' as something to hold while reading, listening and responding to the material.
"The generative proposition another world is possible, the insistence that such a world already is here now and it listens, with others, for the poetry, the refrains, the rhythms, and the noise such a world is making." (Kara Keeling)
- Prepare multiple transcriptions, and make them available on-line or as a print-out
- Split up in groups of maximum three people
- Choose together one of the four refrains to hold on to
- One of the participants reads the transcribed conversation out loud; the others improvise while listening by typing in the chat or writing notes, responses, annotations alongside the description.
- Come together and discuss
Refrains: http://titipi.org/projects/infrastructuralinteractions/refrains.pdf
Refrain to hold on to: beginnings that happen in the middle of things
a little song, a nocturnal creation myth or ‘sketch’ in the middle [...]; it is not a genesis story of the logos and light, but a song of germination in darkness [...] I begin with it because doing so calls attention to the improvisational elements of any beginning, which always happens in the middle of other things.
Kara Keeling, Queer Times, Black Futures
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Refrain to hold on to: making the most of the hinge
Here, the surge as rhythm emerges from attempts to reach beyond the confines of limited places and routines, and yet retains a microscopic view of the constantly surprising details about the places that could be left behind. This is a rhythm of endurance, of surging forward and withdrawing. It is not a rhythm of endless becoming nor of staying put; it is making the most of the “hinge,” of knowing how to move and think through various angles while being fully aware of the constraints, the durability of those things that are “bad for us” (Stoler 2016).
AbdouMaliq Simone, Improvised Lives
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Refrain to hold on to: start with the small things, while keeping in mind the big ones
Any 'archipelagic' thought is a trembling thinking, it is about not-presuming, but also about opening and sharing. We do not need to define a Federations of States first, or to install administrative and institutional orders. It already begins its work of entanglement everywhere, without being concerned with establishing preconditions. As far as our relations in the Archipelago are concerned, let us start with the small things, while keeping in mind the big ones. (Toute pensée archipélique est pensée du tremblement, de la non-présomption, mais aussi de l'ouverture et du partage. Elle n'exige pas qu'on définisse d'abord des Fédérations d'États, des ordres administratifs et institutionnels, elle commence partout son travail d'emmêlement, sans se mêler de poser des préalables. S'agissant de nos rapports dans l'Archipel, commençons par les petites choses, tout en ayant en l'esprit les grandes.)
Edouard Glissant, Traité du tout monde
- ↑ "As such, urban politics will largely be a peripheral politics, not only a politics at the periphery, but a politics whose practices must be divested of many of the assumptions that it derived from the primacy of “the city.”