Day before the road trip, I wake with writing on my brain. And then I remember that I sent a big chunk of that manuscript off and have a break from it for a while. Instead today the countless last minute preparations for leaving: must see my favorite yoga instructor, put coop membership on hold, run by Bluestockings, reorganize files post-deadline frenzy, get keys made (ha), and on.
It's been such a frenzied couple of months of writing and editing that getting a chance to switch gears is exciting, a little nervous making because my writing routine is so dear to me. And like I don't normally publish what I write straight away nor non-expository stuff (is there a word that?).
Looking forward to tour of Eastern State Penitentiary and meeting with Philly folks tomorrow. Will be a good way of beginning the road trip. Yesterday, while enjoying the send-off weekend with mil friends and others, we were talking about tours of New York City, and I realized that I should really start to road trip off with Ellis Island and its sordid houses of detention, barely beneath the surface of US American commonsense about the US as a nation. That will have to wait for the return.
And so now, back to setting up meetings, packing my road trip music [thank you all, and keep sending me links to podcasts!]...
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Beyond Walls and Cages Route
What geographer's road trip would be complete without a map? Ha, ha, though I must say that Google maps does not seem to have the capacity to show all of my data in one page. Boo!
Friday, August 14, 2009
a few words on militant wandering
ok, i'm a little late on the uptake, but robert kramer's route one/usa, which screened at anthology film archives earlier this summer, is really the perfect opening to this road trip. finished in 1989, it's an extended (yes, 4 beautiful long hours) meditation on the united states in places along route one from maine to florida. kramer's scenes capture the materiality of labor during a long period of deindustrialization, and his shots of the sky, swirling water, and the odd squirrel give viewers a visceral sense of presence.
so at its best, the road trip is a meditation on place, and passing through and intersecting with folks living their lives. i hope that by spending time moving through the south and southwest i'll have a better sense for how and why immigrant detention and mass incarceration collide so intently in this region, and how militarization fits into the picture. this is, of course, the post-WWII Gunbelt and site of earlier territorializations of the United States through military conquest and colonialism. how is this founding/ongoing militarization at once possible and impossible to miss?
i take wandering seriously as a way of shifting time scales of daily experience, provoking new collisions of ideas, consolidating thoughts. other folks, like Kramer, of course, have used the method, and enshrined it as a rite of passage. i suppose for me it's the passage - finding magical routes - that's not a rite but a way of being. [and which is why i was so offended earlier this summer up at the Thousand Islands on the US-Canadian border to see a huge tour boat, with rows of neatly seated tourists, named the Intrepid Wanderer]
militant wandering's material in its attention to detail and its sweeping, imaginative claims; deliberative and open to unexpected conjuncture and diversion. and it signals dislocation, and potentially a way of dealing with what feels like permanent dislocation [precarity].
and militancy,
oh, militancy.
i reference militant inquiry as a genre of collective inquiry into conditions shaping our lives that seek to link research and action, knowledge and practice. as part of a group in new york who looks into this method and sometimes practices it collectively and individually, and most often enjoy spending time in each other's company, even creating the possiblity for militant inquiry is a project. and it's one where we also need to take care of each other, hence our jokes about militant hangout. but without this, other work and thoughts and collisions of experience are not possible. oh, mil dining!
i'll post more links to readings on militant inquiry and my thoughts on militancy and anti-violence as i get round to it. you can always share your favorite readings, too. for now, check out constituent imagination published by ak press and this short [dense-ish] piece, "On the Researcher-Militant" by Colectivo Situaciones.
so at its best, the road trip is a meditation on place, and passing through and intersecting with folks living their lives. i hope that by spending time moving through the south and southwest i'll have a better sense for how and why immigrant detention and mass incarceration collide so intently in this region, and how militarization fits into the picture. this is, of course, the post-WWII Gunbelt and site of earlier territorializations of the United States through military conquest and colonialism. how is this founding/ongoing militarization at once possible and impossible to miss?
i take wandering seriously as a way of shifting time scales of daily experience, provoking new collisions of ideas, consolidating thoughts. other folks, like Kramer, of course, have used the method, and enshrined it as a rite of passage. i suppose for me it's the passage - finding magical routes - that's not a rite but a way of being. [and which is why i was so offended earlier this summer up at the Thousand Islands on the US-Canadian border to see a huge tour boat, with rows of neatly seated tourists, named the Intrepid Wanderer]
militant wandering's material in its attention to detail and its sweeping, imaginative claims; deliberative and open to unexpected conjuncture and diversion. and it signals dislocation, and potentially a way of dealing with what feels like permanent dislocation [precarity].
and militancy,
oh, militancy.
i reference militant inquiry as a genre of collective inquiry into conditions shaping our lives that seek to link research and action, knowledge and practice. as part of a group in new york who looks into this method and sometimes practices it collectively and individually, and most often enjoy spending time in each other's company, even creating the possiblity for militant inquiry is a project. and it's one where we also need to take care of each other, hence our jokes about militant hangout. but without this, other work and thoughts and collisions of experience are not possible. oh, mil dining!
i'll post more links to readings on militant inquiry and my thoughts on militancy and anti-violence as i get round to it. you can always share your favorite readings, too. for now, check out constituent imagination published by ak press and this short [dense-ish] piece, "On the Researcher-Militant" by Colectivo Situaciones.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Militant Wandering - First Thoughts
I've started this blog to document a road trip that I'll be taking through the South and Southwest US to explore how policies of immigrant detention and deportation are building on mass incarceration. This project builds on political work and writing on the subject I've been doing since 2006. Most recently this has taken the form of an edited book, Beyond Walls and Cages, I've been working on with fellow activist-geographers Matt Mitchelson and Andrew Burridge. That project has a blog, which mostly tracks press coverage.
I have a few pointed questions for this road trip:
1) How do mass incarceration and immigrant detention and deportation affect livelihoods and community well-being? What alternatives are people proposing to prisons as economic development projects and to the economic dislocations of highly policed communities?
2) How are people organizing to oppose both of these systems? What kinds of coalitions are being forged and around what issues [jail expansion, racial profiling, education, budget crises, right to the city, etc.]?
We're also living through a huge economic crisis, which is part of what propels me into motion. So how are folks coping and trying to create creative, collective, sustainable, happy livelihoods?
Stay tuned for itinerary and posts.
I have a few pointed questions for this road trip:
1) How do mass incarceration and immigrant detention and deportation affect livelihoods and community well-being? What alternatives are people proposing to prisons as economic development projects and to the economic dislocations of highly policed communities?
2) How are people organizing to oppose both of these systems? What kinds of coalitions are being forged and around what issues [jail expansion, racial profiling, education, budget crises, right to the city, etc.]?
We're also living through a huge economic crisis, which is part of what propels me into motion. So how are folks coping and trying to create creative, collective, sustainable, happy livelihoods?
Stay tuned for itinerary and posts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
