Joyful Militancy called me back to this song and also through it because the project of this book is to move beyond “wrong or right” into a space of ethical questioning that is always already conflicting yet, while shifting, can also be strong ground on which to build. This book troubles the second line of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Willing,” a song which, like much of his most powerful and resonant work, itself carries an air of troubling.
They let me glance back, not nostalgically but gladly, at the faces of folks in my own communities actively supporting each other in radical friendships and lives whose resemblance to mainstream representations of happiness is only cursory: because there is a strength I see there that comes from-as carla bergman and Nick Montgomery identify it-the type of joy that looks and feels like growing more powerful together. Against the types of moments that, within movements, can lead to a “loss of collective power,” both song and book offer me images of radical folks engaged in outright and everyday acts of resistance.
Though written by two white folks with deeply different experiences than Gil-folks who crucially implicate not just their privileges but also their behaviors-this book, like the song “Willing” quoted above, offers the echoes of sparks that pull me through lamentation towards reflection and action. The isolations of capitalism and the despairs of facing Empire’s increasingly blatant yet always insidious machinations, oppressions, and attacks will drive me to seek the reminders that are here: of how to recognize my own moments of rigidity, and of how to recognize-beside, within, and far from me-moments of transformation. Like the moment when I first heard Gil Scott-Heron, I knew upon first read that I would return to this book. We’ve all heard so many conflicting words The limits of critique: from paranoia to potentialĪppendix 1: Feeling Powers Growing-An Interview with Silvia FedericiĪppendix 2: Breaking Down the Walls around Each Other-An Interview with Kelsey Cham C.įoreword by Hari Alluri Willing to be Troubled: an essay with a love note to Gil Scott-Heron Radical perfectionism and paranoid reading
Lack-finding, perfectionism, schooling, walking You’re so paranoid, you probably think this section is about you (Mis)trust and (ir)responsibility under EmpireĮmergent trust and responsibility: three examplesĬhapter 4: Stifling Air, Burnout, Political PerformanceĬhapter 5: Undoing Rigid Radicalism, Activating Joy Trust and responsibility as common notions The active shaping of our worlds togetherĬhapter 3: Trust and Responsibility as Common Notions Starting from where people find themselvesĬhapter 2: Friendship, Freedom, Ethics, AffinityĬonnecting Spinozan currents to Indigenous resurgence
Willing to be Troubled: an essay with a love note to Gil Scott-Heron
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