Transnational Research Collectives as “Constellations of Co-Resistance”: Counterstorytelling, Interweaving Struggles, and Decolonial Love

Settler colonialism and coloniality dominate and dismember the truths, the bodies, and the lands of the colonized. Decolonization and decoloniality involve intergenerational, embodied, and emplaced pathways of resistance, rehumanization, healing, and transformation. In this article, we uplift the healing and transformative power of transnational stories and embodied knowledges that are rooted in four research collectives: the Palestinian Resilience Research Collective (PRRC) in the West Bank; the Mapuche Equipo Colaborativo para la Investigación de la Resiliencia (MECIR) in Chile; the Community Action Team (CAT) in Boston, USA; and the Miya Community Research Collective (MCRC) in Assam, Northeast India. We, the co-authors of this article, are directly connected to these four research collectives. Across our collectives, we work to defend the right to exist, to belong, and to express our full range of humanity as racialized and colonized communities in distinct, yet connected, sites of struggle. Our transnational focus of this article is premised on a fundamental rejection of borders, even as we recognize the material and psychosocial realities of borders. In co-writing this article, we bring decolonial solidarity into life through “constellations of co-resistance,” a concept used by Indigenous scholars such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson to describe complex connective fabrics across decolonial struggles. We share our reflections on three practices of decolonial solidarity that shine through each of our transnational research collectives as three constellations of co-resistance: counterstorytelling, interweaving struggles, and decolonial love.

Questioning the quest for Pluralism: How Decolonial is Non-Western IR?

Since early 2000s, scholars of international relations have been questioning the Western-centrism of their home discipline and, in a quest for pluralism, have been envisioning ways of conceptualizing the world beyond the West. At the same time, an intellectual movement known as modernity/coloniality research collective has been critically reflecting about modernity and its often-neglected counterpart, coloniality, to resist universalism and to decolonize knowledge. Engaging with the attempts to procure pluralism in the discourse of international relations, the purpose of this article is to question the different perspectives of non-Western international relations from a decolonial angle to identify intellectual projects that could lead to decolonizing the discipline. In its discussion of how decolonial non-Western IR theory is, the article argues that while some perspectives within the subfield openly reject or simply ignore the concerns raised by decolonial thought, others put forward intellectual projects where decolonial arguments resonate. Hence, rather than characterizing the subfield in general terms, the article distinguishes those perspectives that are attentive to the need of generating a true dialog among knowledges and, by so doing, it contributes to critical scholarship within international relations.

Demonstrative protest crime: the limits of criminological analysis

Classical and network protest always assumes mass character. In this regard, the study of protest movements should assume: a) The analysis of many protest actions; b) the analysis of each individual protest action as a manifestation of the phenomenon of collective behavior. At the same time, the first level is important in the context of ensuring the representativeness of the second type of research. «Collective action» and «action of a team member» are fundamentally important. The regulatory system always deals with the assessment of the behavior of a particular person. In this regard, criminology and criminal law should not focus on the protest actions themselves, but on the behavior of individuals within the framework of these actions. In the theoretical analysis of the behavior of these individual participants of mass actions, it is necessary to distinguish: a) actions performed during a mass action, and actions that ensure the protest action itself, which can be performed both before and after it; b) actions of organizers, inspirers, leaders of protest actions, and actions of ordinary participants of the protest action; c) actions related to the organization and participation in mass actions coordinated by the official authorities, and in those not coordinated by the official authorities; d) lawful actions and illegal actions, and among the latter - criminally illegal and administratively illegal; e) intellectual, informational actions, and physical actions. To describe these actions, the article suggests using the term «demonstrative protest crimes». They are: a) associated with a well-defined sphere of public relations that arise in the process of interaction between a person, society and the authorities; b) they are imbued with the unity of motivational factors and the characteristics of the personality of the participants; c) they have a common determinative complex and a common mechanism for their commission; d) they have a distinct separation by the place and time of their commission; e) they assume a specific type and mechanism for the implementation of preventive measures. These signs allow us to consider demonstrative protest crimes as a separate, independent type of crime.

Luanda, cidade-mundo, ou da estética do desenvolvilmento desigual em Os Transparentes, de Ondjaki

A entrada de Angola na economia neoliberal e o fim da guerra civil deram a Luanda o aspecto de um canteiro de obras que visava conferir a ela o status de cidade global. Todavia, as mudanças econômicas advindas das relações (assimétricas) com o capital internacional não foram capazes de obliterar a permanência de desigualdades e da lógica espacial de exclusão incrustrada na urbe. Tomando esse contexto e as concepções de literatura-mundo definidas por membros do Warwick Research Collective (2015), o artigo analisa as contradições do sistema-mundo capitalista no romance Os transparentes (2013), de Ondjaki, compreendido aqui como expressão cultural da lógica contraditória da modernidade.

Apresentando o WReC: uma entrevista com Neil Lazarus, Sharae Deckard e Michael Niblett

Esta entrevista aborda a teoria da literatura-mundial do Warwick Research Collective (WReC), que se define como ‘a literatura do sistema-mundo capitalista’, por meio duma discussão com três membros do grupo: Neil Lazarus, Sharae Deckard e Michael Niblett. Ao longo da entrevista, abrangemos a conjuntura disciplinar que deu origem à debate crescente da literatura mundial e que estimulou o grupo a juntar-se e a formular a sua teoria; os quadros conceptuais principais que informam as suas leituras, como a análise do sistema-mundo e ‘a lei do desenvolvimento desigual e combinado’ de Leon Trotsky; a sua engajamento com os teóricos brasileiros Roberto Schwarz e Michael Löwy; e o papel da tradução na sua concepção materialista da produção literária global. O trabalho do WReC é uma das mais sofisticadas tentativas de levar por diante a tradição marxista na crítica literária para enfrentar os contornos socioculturais cambiantes do mundo contemporâneo. Esta entrevista procura clarificar as proposições centrais do coletivo assim como problematizar algumas áreas de contenção.

Frederic Jameson e o problema das alegorias nacionais do terceiro mundo

O presente artigo revisita as elaborações de Fredric Jameson sobre a Literatura do Terceiro Mundo e o debate que se seguiu às suas reflexões. Fazemos um apanhado das alterações e reparos que Jameson fez de seu pensamento ao longo das décadas de críticas e embates. Por fim, apresentamos uma hipótese de leitura das elaborações do Warwick Research Collective (Wreck) como respostas às críticas que Jameson sofreu e também como continuação de suas elaborações. Tanto o crítico estadunidense como o coletivo de pesquisadores representam com seus aportes teóricos uma via de debate para o marxismo na área dos estudos pós-coloniais dentro do campo literário, a partir da Teoria do Sistema-Mundo e da Teoria do Desenvolvimento Desigual e Combinado, contribuindo com a problemática da World-Literature.

Gender Trouble and Return of the Sexual in a Cisgender Research Collective Confronted With Trans∗ Femininity

The author analyzes a research study of trans∗ women and their surgeons, conducted before and after vaginoplasty in a French public hospital service. The essay is an examination of countertransference in three research frameworks: (1) working with a research team; (2) taking part in a peer group, facilitated by a psychologist, a surgeon, and a secretary, bringing together women who had already undergone surgery and those awaiting it; and (3) research interviews with Lara, a 64-year-old trans∗ woman. The author emphasizes the importance of taking into account gender countertransference—that is, the disruptive effects of the encounter with trans∗ people and their desires, paying specific attention to what the encounter with trans∗ femininities has stirred or revealed in terms of the author's own relationship to the body and to cisgender femininity.

Sonic bombardment, noise hypersensitivity and ethics: A response to Fodstad and colleagues: ‘Assessment and treatment of noise hypersensitivity in a teenager with autism Spectrum Disorder’

This commentary – provided by a group of Autistic researchers – reflects on a case study trialling a ‘modified Cognitive Behavioural Therapy intervention’ to address the ‘noise hypersensitivity’ and associated behaviours of an Autistic teenager, ‘Aaron’. We identify serious flaws in the evidence base behind the ‘therapy’: including failing to account for divergent Autistic sensory reactivity, aiming to remove ‘stimming’ behaviours and promoting masking. We challenge the lack of informed consent reported as given by either Aaron or a proxy and the absence of any reported ethical approval for this case study. We also strongly condemn the methods of sonic bombardment delivered upon Aaron under the guise of ‘therapy’. We conclude with three questions around the processes that led to the original article’s publication. All authors are joint first authors. The essay was published by Participatory Autism Research Collective: https://participatoryautismresearch.wordpress.com/2021/10/27/sonic-bombardment-noise-hypersensitivity-and-ethics-a-response-to-fodstad-and-colleagues/

“People Are Demanding Justice”: Pandemics, Protests, and Remote Learning Through the Eyes of Immigrant Youth of Color

This paper examines a youth oral history project conducted by/with/for immigrant youth of color and educators. Designed as a longitudinal five year project of critical participatory action research and youth oral histories, we sought initially to document generational experiences of schooling inequity, aggressive policing, housing precarity and immigration struggles. As a research collective we then confronted and chose to interrogate how COVID19, uprisings and activism, and remote learning affect youth of color. In our analysis we “discovered” the power of culturally responsive and sustaining education as a framework to cultivate critical consciousness and civic engagement. With an epistemic commitment to “no research on us without us,” decolonizing methodologies and research for social action, we review in this article our theoretical frameworks, epistemic commitments, methodologies, our ethical praxis and our evidence-based activism, as we explore the intimate details of critical participation as core to anti-racist developmental science.