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Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency and Cultural Production
Boycott and divestment are essential tools for activists around the globe. Today’s organizers target museums, universities, corporations, and governments to curtail unethical sources of profit, discriminatory practices, or human rights violations. They leverage cultural production – and challenge its institutional supports – helping transform situations in the name of social justice.
The refusal to participate in an oppressive system has long been one of the most powerful weapons in the organizer’s arsenal. Since the days of the 19th century Irish land wars, when Irish tenant farmers defied the actions of Captain Charles Boycott and English landlords, “boycott” has been a method that’s shown its effectiveness time and again. In the 20th century, it notably played central roles in the liberation of India and South Africa and the struggle for civil rights in the U.S.: the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott is generally seen as a turning point in the movement against segregation.
Assuming Boycott is the essential reader for today’s creative leaders and cultural practitioners, including original contributions by artists, scholars, activists, critics, curators and writers who examine the historical precedent of South Africa; the current cultural boycott of Israel; freedom of speech and self-censorship; and long-distance activism. Far from withdrawal or cynicism, boycott emerges as a productive tool of creative and productive engagement.
Including essays by Nasser Abourahme, Ariella Azoulay, Tania Bruguera, Noura Erakat, Kareem Estefan, Mariam Ghani with Haig Aivazian, Nathan Gray and Ahmet Öğüt, Chelsea Haines, Sean Jacobs, Yazan Khalili, Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich, Svetlana Mintcheva, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hlonipha Mokoena, John Peffer, Joshua Simon, Ann Laura Stoler, Radhika Subramaniam, Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan, and Frank B. Wilderson III.
The refusal to participate in an oppressive system has long been one of the most powerful weapons in the organizer’s arsenal. Since the days of the 19th century Irish land wars, when Irish tenant farmers defied the actions of Captain Charles Boycott and English landlords, “boycott” has been a method that’s shown its effectiveness time and again. In the 20th century, it notably played central roles in the liberation of India and South Africa and the struggle for civil rights in the U.S.: the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott is generally seen as a turning point in the movement against segregation.
Assuming Boycott is the essential reader for today’s creative leaders and cultural practitioners, including original contributions by artists, scholars, activists, critics, curators and writers who examine the historical precedent of South Africa; the current cultural boycott of Israel; freedom of speech and self-censorship; and long-distance activism. Far from withdrawal or cynicism, boycott emerges as a productive tool of creative and productive engagement.
Including essays by Nasser Abourahme, Ariella Azoulay, Tania Bruguera, Noura Erakat, Kareem Estefan, Mariam Ghani with Haig Aivazian, Nathan Gray and Ahmet Öğüt, Chelsea Haines, Sean Jacobs, Yazan Khalili, Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich, Svetlana Mintcheva, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hlonipha Mokoena, John Peffer, Joshua Simon, Ann Laura Stoler, Radhika Subramaniam, Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan, and Frank B. Wilderson III.
276 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
94 people want to read
About the author
Kareem Estefan
2 books2 followersKareem Estefan is an art critic, writer, editor, and doctoral candidate in Brown University’s Modern Culture and Media department, where he researches contemporary visual culture and the intersections of art, media, and politics, with a focus on the Middle East. His writing on contemporary art and cultural activism has appeared in Art in America, Art-Agenda, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Ibraaz, and The New Inquiry, among other places. From 2012–2015, Estefan was Associate Editor of Creative Time Reports, an online magazine of the New York-based public art nonprofit Creative Time, where he worked closely with artists such as James Bridle, Mel Chin, Molly Crabapple, Mariam Ghani, Emily Jacir, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Ahmet Öğüt on texts that addressed pressing political issues.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 11, 2022
For a practice that is so widely discussed and invoked, the boycott as a tactic is poorly understood as a political tool and activist demand. So much of the way it is discussed and invoked does little to draw a distinction, for instance, between consumer boycotts, state imposed limits and sanctions, and activist demands place limits on the ways we engage with particular situations and practices. Much of the literature focuses on state policy, yet for many activists and supporters, boycotts are a way expressing opposition, a frame and approach around which to educate and organise, and a way to assert what might be. It is hard, when looking at state policy, not to conclude that they are cynically invoked – as a way to criticise but with little effect, whereas as a tactic it means digging in for a long haul, in conjunction with many other approaches.
Consider the most well-known mass movement boycotts – the Montgomery bus boycott lasting 54 weeks from December 1955 to December 1956, during which African-Americans refused to use the segregated service – it took a year to change one company’s practice. Or the South African focused anti-apartheid movement, which working towards the total social, economic and political isolation of the apartheid regime (which was never fully achieved) but which in alignment with other tactics and struggle within South Africa, after 30 years managed to bring about the end to the system as a formal thing – culture change takes longer. The South African focused movement is important, and a key part of his important collection of essays, because it provides the model and inspiration for the Palestinian led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel’s settler colonial state.
This collection focuses for the most on the cultural part of that boycott movement, exploring what might be learned from the South African case, delving into the specifics of the focus on Israel and the Palestinian cause and considering how other concurrent arts-based boycott movements relate to BDS. Most of the papers were initially presented as part of a seminar series hosted by The New School in New York, giving the collection a coherence built around four themes: the South Africa campaign, BDS, the question of who speaks and who is silenced, and the wider question of engagement and disengagement.
Some of the most valuable pieces directly confront the question of who boycotts and to what end tactically. Arielle Aïsha Azoulay’s powerful piece asking what it means as an anti-Zionist Jew to exercise the right not to be a perpetrator is one of the most important in the collection, alongside pieces by Noura Erakat and by Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan on what they label co-resistance. These three pieces in particular pose significant tactical and political questions for wider consideration, especially Azoulay’s right not to be a perpetrator problem. Similarly, essays by artists including Tania Brugera and Miriam Ghani explore the challenging question of cultural production in times of heightened political struggle, of voice and of presence respectively. Not many miss the mark – but Svetlana Mintcheva’s exploration of the ethics of free speech finishes up being too removed from the daily character of political struggle to have much to say to the everyday and lapses into a form of liberal contextualism that sets it apart from many of the other contributions.
Most of the pieces here are valuable, raising important questions not just for those of us whose scholarly work leads us to grapple with boycotts, but also for activism and struggle. Crucially, in focusing on social movement activism, not state policy, and by refusing to frame the boycott tactic as one of consumer choice this collection helps shift both the academic debates and the activist approach. It is a valuable and important contribution that deserves wider consideration.
Consider the most well-known mass movement boycotts – the Montgomery bus boycott lasting 54 weeks from December 1955 to December 1956, during which African-Americans refused to use the segregated service – it took a year to change one company’s practice. Or the South African focused anti-apartheid movement, which working towards the total social, economic and political isolation of the apartheid regime (which was never fully achieved) but which in alignment with other tactics and struggle within South Africa, after 30 years managed to bring about the end to the system as a formal thing – culture change takes longer. The South African focused movement is important, and a key part of his important collection of essays, because it provides the model and inspiration for the Palestinian led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel’s settler colonial state.
This collection focuses for the most on the cultural part of that boycott movement, exploring what might be learned from the South African case, delving into the specifics of the focus on Israel and the Palestinian cause and considering how other concurrent arts-based boycott movements relate to BDS. Most of the papers were initially presented as part of a seminar series hosted by The New School in New York, giving the collection a coherence built around four themes: the South Africa campaign, BDS, the question of who speaks and who is silenced, and the wider question of engagement and disengagement.
Some of the most valuable pieces directly confront the question of who boycotts and to what end tactically. Arielle Aïsha Azoulay’s powerful piece asking what it means as an anti-Zionist Jew to exercise the right not to be a perpetrator is one of the most important in the collection, alongside pieces by Noura Erakat and by Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan on what they label co-resistance. These three pieces in particular pose significant tactical and political questions for wider consideration, especially Azoulay’s right not to be a perpetrator problem. Similarly, essays by artists including Tania Brugera and Miriam Ghani explore the challenging question of cultural production in times of heightened political struggle, of voice and of presence respectively. Not many miss the mark – but Svetlana Mintcheva’s exploration of the ethics of free speech finishes up being too removed from the daily character of political struggle to have much to say to the everyday and lapses into a form of liberal contextualism that sets it apart from many of the other contributions.
Most of the pieces here are valuable, raising important questions not just for those of us whose scholarly work leads us to grapple with boycotts, but also for activism and struggle. Crucially, in focusing on social movement activism, not state policy, and by refusing to frame the boycott tactic as one of consumer choice this collection helps shift both the academic debates and the activist approach. It is a valuable and important contribution that deserves wider consideration.
August 20, 2018
As a collection of essays, it's somewhat uneven, but mostly worthwhile. There are some interesting ideas in here I hadn't previously been exposed to, particularly in providing details about how the Anti-Apartheid Movement played out, and perspectives on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) against Israel and the Gulf Labor efforts targeting the Guggenheim. There was one supremely bad take on free speech and "censorship" that is an embarrassment to the rest of the volume. If you're interested in boycott and divestment as tactics, or if you're a "cultural producer" interested in the artist's role in politics, it's worth checking out.
May 31, 2021
A really interesting group of essays on the power of boycotts and how they have been utilised across the world. Please skip the awful free speech essay if you want peace.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews