Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle

by Joy James (Contributor), Silvia Federici (Contributor), Kelly Fritsch (Editor)

"An extraordinary volume that provides nothing less than a detailed cognitive mapping of the terrain for everyone who wants to engage in radical politics."—Slavoj Žižek, author of Living in the End Times

“Keywords for Radicals recognizes that language is both a weapon and terrain of struggle, and that all of us committed to changing our social and material reality, to making a world justice-rich and oppression-free, cannot drop words such as ‘democracy,’ ‘occupation,’ ‘colonialism,’ ‘race,’ ‘sovereignty,’ or ‘love’ without a fight. —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"From its thought-provoking Introduction though its energizing accounts of the tensions underlying our most prized concepts, Keywords for Radicals will be indispensable to any scholar or activist who is serious about critique and change."—Stephen Duncombe, editor of Cultural Resistance Reader

“A primer for a new era of political protest.” —Jack Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity

“This keywords upgrade puts powerful weapons into revolutionaries' hands. Unexpected entries expand into new terrain.… Indispensable.” —Jodi Dean, author of The Communist Horizon

In Keywords (1976), Raymond Williams devised a "vocabulary" that reflected the vast social transformations of the post-war period. He revealed how these transformations could be grasped by investigating changes in word usage and meaning. Keywords for Radicals—part homage, part development—asks: What vocabulary might illuminate the social transformations marking our own contested present? How do these words define the imaginary of today's radical left?

With insights from dozens of scholars and troublemakers, Keywords for Radicals explores the words that shape our political landscape. Each entry highlights a term's contested variations, traces its evolving usage, and speculates about what its historical mutations can tell us. More than a glossary, this is a crucial study of the power of language and the social contradictions hidden within it.

Contributors include Patrick Bond, Silvia Federici, John Bellamy Foster, Joy James, Ilan Pappé, Justin Podur, Nina Power, Mab Segrest, and over forty others.

Kelly Fritsch is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto.
Clare O'Connor is a doctoral student in Communication at the University of Southern California.
A.K. Thompson teaches social theory at Fordham University in New York.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editors — Introduction

Kelly Fritsch — Accessible

Clare O’Connor — Accountability

AK Thompson — Agency

Mab Segrest — Allies

Maia Ramnath — Authority

Anna Agathangelou — Bodies

Christine Kelly — Care

Johanna Brenner — Class

Lorenzo Veracini — Colonialism

George Caffentzis — Commons

Sarah Lamble — Community

Mandy Hiscocks — Conspiracy

Robert McRuer — Crip

Nina Power — Demand

Donatella della Porta — Democracy

Ruth Kinna — Domination

Kate Kaul — Experience

Simon Wallace — Friend

Rasheedah Phillips — Future

Tammy Kovich — Gender

Richard Day — Hegemony

Bryan D Palmer — History

Ana Cecilia Dinerstein — Hope

Himani Bannerji — Ideology

Sumayya Kassamali — Intellectual

Sam Gindin — Labor

Joy James — Leadership

Robin Marie Averbeck — Liberal

Heather Davis — Love

Rosemary Hennessy — Materialism

Eliza Steinbock — Misogyny

Sunera Thobani — Nation

John Bellamy Foster — Nature

Sara Matthews — Occupation

Justin Podur — Oppression

Deborah Gould — Politics

Stefan Kipfer — Populism

Christian Scholl — Prefiguration

Douglas Williams — Privilege

Natalie Kouri-Towe — Queer

Conor Tomás Reed — Race

Jaleh Mansoor — Representation

Silvia Federici — Reproduction

Miranda Joseph — Responsibility

Thomas Nail — Revolution

Rebecca Schein — Rights

Markus Kip — Solidarity

Stacy Douglas — Sovereignty

Kanishka Goonewardena — Space

Patrick Bond — Sustainable

Dan Irving — Trans*/-

David McNally — Utopia

Alan Shandro — Vanguard

Heather Hax — Victory

Peter Gelderloos — Violence

Neil Balan — War

Illan Pappé — Zionism

References

Appendix

About the Contributors

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Activism, Philosophy, Social Justice, Economics, Anarchism

567 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Joy James is the John B. and John T. McCoy Presidential Professor of Humanities and College Professor in Political Science at Williams College. She is the author of Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture, and her edited works on incarceration and human rights include States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons and Imprisoned Intellectuals: America's Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion.

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannot recommend enough ! I read it in alphabetical order (a few entries a day) and will probably go back and read jumping around to different places in the semantic network/following the connections between words. Words mean things ! And this is an excellent way to remind ourselves of their complex histories.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the early days of the internet, I was involved in an online argument with another anarchist about the use of the word "imperialism" which a person had used in the discussion to describe US actions in the world. This anarchist--let's call him Mr. Pedantic--castigated her for using a Leninist/Stalinist/Marxist term and said you can't use that word and be an anarchist. I took the position that while there was a specific meaning in the past, it has transformed into a generic term for nosing into other country's affairs, invading, or expropriating. We went back and forth for some time--Mr. Pedantic not budging and me arguing that language is fluid, changing, and we can figure out what people mean by context (or just by asking them instead of telling them what they mean [Mr. Pedantic was typical of mansplaining anarchists]).

This anthology aims to track those fluid changes and pin down possible definitions of certain words in order to facilitate communication amongst radicals and others and illuminate the way concepts can inform or shape our actions. Does it succeed? Yes, and no, and maybe.

Like words and concepts, the entries here are open to interpretation: if you agree with how the words is framed and defined, then you'll like that entry. it may be more useful if you have some disagreement, because then you have to think about why you do. As fascinating as many of the entries are--covering history, current usage, concepts, philosophies, and more--I found myself thinking that, you know, sometimes it just doesn't matter what words you use, only what actions you take. The push and pull between academic concepts and day to day reality was little explored in most entries. I kept wanting to tell the writer to look up the word practical.

At any rate, most of the entries read like academic papers. As such, this anthology may not be useful to those without an educational background or experience in this specialized format.

I would give this to a budding radical who is also a bookworm. That may be a narrow audience, but those who are interested will love it.

Oh yeah, too much Marx in this thing.

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

IMO best read out of alphabetical order, picking a term at semi-random (I started with "Hope") and following the network of related terms. I read maybe 80% of the book this way before closing the loop. A good overview of terms and their contestation. Although it'll be hard for me to remember the genealogy of each term, having read it slowly means I'll hopefully be more thoughtful and critical about the keywords I use and encounter in future.

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book: nothing less than total war at the flash points of Revolution- the very compositions of oppression and freedom from their very DNA brought to their reclamation to a re-foundation and back to Revolution.
From this book: the beauty is not in destroying words the beauty is in reanimating them. Here are 57 words recharged, and reclaimed for the People.
Use them well comrades!

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.

[Gareth Gummow · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is generally enthralling, and does a decent job at outlining anarchist thought and Trotskyist thought. Each chapter when taken in isolation can be entertaining.

The issues are that the alphabetical chapter ordering works poorly in practice. Also, each chapter is written by a different person, none of whom share quite the same perspectives or interpretations of politics. This sounds really good on paper, but in practice makes the book fairly infuriating to read, especially because there doesn't appear to have been much communication between the different writers. For example, well over half the book consisted of criticisms of Marxism, yet Marxism, Communism, nor Socialism or Anarchism are included as chapters. The end product when taken as a whole just comes across as incoherent.

[Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was alternately deeply interesting and really maddening. Many of the best definitions were good enough to leave you wanting a lot more, without quite giving me the detail I needed for the particular (admittedly unusual) patterns I was seeking. Still, a really interesting approach that I’d love to see applied in other contexts.

[Chanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a cool & thorough dive into the etymology and history behind the language we use.

[Noah Christiansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read:
- Introduction