What do you think?
Rate this book
Joie Militante : construire les luttes en prise avec leur monde
À quoi ressemble la joie dans les milieux de lutte ? Qu’est-ce qui nous rend collectivement et individuellement plus capables, plus puissant·e·s et pourquoi, parfois, les milieux radicaux produisent tout l’inverse et nous vident de tout désir ?
C’est à ces questions que Joie militante tente de répondre, combinant propositions théoriques, analyses de cas pratiques et entretiens avec des militant·e·s issu·e·s de luttes
diverses : féminisme, libération Noire, résurgence Autochtone, squat, occupations, luttes queer, anti-carcérales, d’autonomie des jeunes, anarchisme, autonomisme, écologie radicale.
La joie, au sens spinoziste du terme, renvoie à notre capacité à affecter et être affecté·e·s, à prendre activement part à la transformation collective, à accepter d’en être bouleversé·e·s. La joie telle qu’elle nous est ici proposée est une façon d’habiter pleinement nos mondes, nos attachements, plutôt que de chercher à les diriger.
Ce livre, paru aux États-Unis en 2017, y est déjà devenu un incontournable pour penser différemment le militantisme et les luttes. Il s’agit maintenant d’ouvrir également ces discussions au contexte français.
C’est à ces questions que Joie militante tente de répondre, combinant propositions théoriques, analyses de cas pratiques et entretiens avec des militant·e·s issu·e·s de luttes
diverses : féminisme, libération Noire, résurgence Autochtone, squat, occupations, luttes queer, anti-carcérales, d’autonomie des jeunes, anarchisme, autonomisme, écologie radicale.
La joie, au sens spinoziste du terme, renvoie à notre capacité à affecter et être affecté·e·s, à prendre activement part à la transformation collective, à accepter d’en être bouleversé·e·s. La joie telle qu’elle nous est ici proposée est une façon d’habiter pleinement nos mondes, nos attachements, plutôt que de chercher à les diriger.
Ce livre, paru aux États-Unis en 2017, y est déjà devenu un incontournable pour penser différemment le militantisme et les luttes. Il s’agit maintenant d’ouvrir également ces discussions au contexte français.
268 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 2017
345 people are currently reading
6152 people want to read
About the author
Carla Bergman
5 books24 followerscarla bergman is an independent scholar, filmmaker, and budding poet. She is the co-author of Joyful Militancy (AK Press) and edited Radiant Voices: 21 Feminist Essays for Rising Up (TouchWood Editions). carla is currently working on a book called Trust Kids! (AK Press, 2021). Most recently, she has had the privilege to be part of an international collective, colectiva sembrar, who together edited the new book, Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid During Covid-19 (Pluto Press, June 2020). carla spends much of her time capturing beauty with a camera, and walking with her partner, kids, and friends on Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, and Musqueam Lands (Vancouver, BC).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews
January 15, 2019
I read this with a book group, and was so compelled by carla and Nick's framework for nurturing leftist organizing cultures. It's no secret that "rigid radicalism" is an energetically-crushing facet of our movement psyches, and that this mindset has emerged based on completely valid realities of trauma, betrayal, exploitation, and harm (within and without our organizing circles). "Joyful militancy" is a way through -- not a prescriptive how-to, but an experimental, open-ended conversation that invites curiosity and generative shifts toward visionary presence, openness, and connection. In fact, "joyful" in this case does not refer to "happiness" (see the authors' critique of capitalist positivity), but actually to "the capacity to affect and be affected".
Getting into these ideas with others is helpful with Joyful Militancy, precisely because of the authors' insistence on holding their concepts "gently" (so as not to fall into dogmatism). In each chapter, carla and Nick offer thoughtful arguments for how we might re-center our movement communities... and in each chapter, they describe the ways in which the "common notions" they lift up might not get us what we want politically, if we don't complicate our understanding of how they operate. Initially, this was a point of frustration for me as a reader; I wanted the text to offer something more "concrete", and for the authors to make a more prescriptive case for how their theory could be built, held, and navigated inside of politically/emotionally fraught conditions. But this hesitance to set up joyful militancy inside a hardline set of ideological principles is actual the central beauty of this book:
"Joyful militancy is not a way of dividing the world into 'positive' and 'negative' ways of being or asking that we all get along or be happy together. Freedom always needs to retain the potential of refusal, negation, and resistance. To turn friendship into a solution or a goal is to erase the form of freedom we are getting at, which is the freedom to work at relationships - to participate more actively in the shaping of our worlds."
So, cue the book group or reading buddy: since we can't really create "shared thinking-feeling-doings" (like trust and responsibility) when they're compulsory or prescribed, what does it take to put the ideas in this book into action? Pouring over these ideas with others can help sort out the particularities of how joyful militancy can be practiced, attempted, and processed inside of our specific contexts.
This book resonated with me as a lover of adrienne marie brown's Emergent Strategy (no wonder; quotes from the author's interview with amb are featured throughout the book), Ursula Le Guin (specifically, in the sociopolitical dynamics that emerged for the anarchist society on Anarres in The Dispossessed), and the politicized healing modality practiced at the core of generative somatics. It's a response to "call-out culture" that doesn't categorically condemn our need to reject (in the authors’ philosophy, all of our connections and interactions can and do have “sharp edges”), nor does it minimize the people most impacted by the things we feel compelled to name as problematic (inside our own communities, and in the larger societies we live in). I especially appreciated the perspectives of First Nations organizers like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Glen Coulthard that are lifted up prominently in this text. Joyful militancy is so exciting because of the lineages it’s rooted in, and the relationships that made its writing possible. I love that the way forward in this context is not in cultivating our most rigid adherence to a pure system of thought, but through nurturing the “cracks” in Empire that are evidence of our capacity for aliveness & desire that exist outside of subjection.
Getting into these ideas with others is helpful with Joyful Militancy, precisely because of the authors' insistence on holding their concepts "gently" (so as not to fall into dogmatism). In each chapter, carla and Nick offer thoughtful arguments for how we might re-center our movement communities... and in each chapter, they describe the ways in which the "common notions" they lift up might not get us what we want politically, if we don't complicate our understanding of how they operate. Initially, this was a point of frustration for me as a reader; I wanted the text to offer something more "concrete", and for the authors to make a more prescriptive case for how their theory could be built, held, and navigated inside of politically/emotionally fraught conditions. But this hesitance to set up joyful militancy inside a hardline set of ideological principles is actual the central beauty of this book:
"Joyful militancy is not a way of dividing the world into 'positive' and 'negative' ways of being or asking that we all get along or be happy together. Freedom always needs to retain the potential of refusal, negation, and resistance. To turn friendship into a solution or a goal is to erase the form of freedom we are getting at, which is the freedom to work at relationships - to participate more actively in the shaping of our worlds."
So, cue the book group or reading buddy: since we can't really create "shared thinking-feeling-doings" (like trust and responsibility) when they're compulsory or prescribed, what does it take to put the ideas in this book into action? Pouring over these ideas with others can help sort out the particularities of how joyful militancy can be practiced, attempted, and processed inside of our specific contexts.
This book resonated with me as a lover of adrienne marie brown's Emergent Strategy (no wonder; quotes from the author's interview with amb are featured throughout the book), Ursula Le Guin (specifically, in the sociopolitical dynamics that emerged for the anarchist society on Anarres in The Dispossessed), and the politicized healing modality practiced at the core of generative somatics. It's a response to "call-out culture" that doesn't categorically condemn our need to reject (in the authors’ philosophy, all of our connections and interactions can and do have “sharp edges”), nor does it minimize the people most impacted by the things we feel compelled to name as problematic (inside our own communities, and in the larger societies we live in). I especially appreciated the perspectives of First Nations organizers like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Glen Coulthard that are lifted up prominently in this text. Joyful militancy is so exciting because of the lineages it’s rooted in, and the relationships that made its writing possible. I love that the way forward in this context is not in cultivating our most rigid adherence to a pure system of thought, but through nurturing the “cracks” in Empire that are evidence of our capacity for aliveness & desire that exist outside of subjection.
January 20, 2023
Some passages from Joyful Militancy:
*
There is something that circulates in many radical movements and spaces, draining away their transformative potential. Anyone who has frequented these spaces has felt it. Many (including us) have actively participated in it, spread it, and been hurt by it. It nurtures rigidity, mistrust, and anxiety precisely where we are supposed to feel most alive. It compels us to search ourselves and others ruthlessly for flaws and inconsistencies. It crushes experimentation and curiosity. It is hostile to difference, complexity, and nuance. Or it is the most complex, the most nuanced, and everyone else is simplistic and stupid. Radicalism becomes an ideal, and everyone becomes deficient in comparison.
The anxious posturing, the vigilant search for mistakes and limitations, the hostility that crushes a hesitant new idea, the way that critique becomes a reflex, the sense that things are urgent yet pointless, the circulation of the latest article tearing apart bad habits and behaviors, the way shaming others becomes comfortable, the ceaseless generation of necessities and duties, the sense of feeling guilty about one’s own fear and loneliness, the clash of political views that requires a winner and a loser, the performance of anti-oppressive language, the way that some stare at the floor or look at the door. We know these tendencies intimately. We have seen them circulating and felt them pass through us.
*
Maintaining transformative relationships is not easy in a world full of violence, in which Empire continually induces us (especially white, cis-male settlers) to construct flimsy relationships based in leisure and to abandon them if they are no longer pleasurable.
*
Most of what is called privilege has nothing to do with thriving or joy; this is why privileged white men are some of the most emotionally stunted, closed-off people alive today.
*
There is something that circulates in many radical movements and spaces, draining away their transformative potential. Anyone who has frequented these spaces has felt it. Many (including us) have actively participated in it, spread it, and been hurt by it. It nurtures rigidity, mistrust, and anxiety precisely where we are supposed to feel most alive. It compels us to search ourselves and others ruthlessly for flaws and inconsistencies. It crushes experimentation and curiosity. It is hostile to difference, complexity, and nuance. Or it is the most complex, the most nuanced, and everyone else is simplistic and stupid. Radicalism becomes an ideal, and everyone becomes deficient in comparison.
The anxious posturing, the vigilant search for mistakes and limitations, the hostility that crushes a hesitant new idea, the way that critique becomes a reflex, the sense that things are urgent yet pointless, the circulation of the latest article tearing apart bad habits and behaviors, the way shaming others becomes comfortable, the ceaseless generation of necessities and duties, the sense of feeling guilty about one’s own fear and loneliness, the clash of political views that requires a winner and a loser, the performance of anti-oppressive language, the way that some stare at the floor or look at the door. We know these tendencies intimately. We have seen them circulating and felt them pass through us.
*
Maintaining transformative relationships is not easy in a world full of violence, in which Empire continually induces us (especially white, cis-male settlers) to construct flimsy relationships based in leisure and to abandon them if they are no longer pleasurable.
*
Most of what is called privilege has nothing to do with thriving or joy; this is why privileged white men are some of the most emotionally stunted, closed-off people alive today.
Read
May 5, 2018I didn't like this one nearly as much as I wanted to. The problem it addresses is real, urgent, and not discussed nearly as much as it needs to be. In fact, many of the ways it describes "rigid radicalism" felt painfully familiar. The anti-authoritarian sensibility underlying the work resonated with me. And scattered throughout are individual insights about the ways that our groups do, don't, and could work and specific ideas about the world that sparked quite useful reflection in me, and that I'm sure would do the same in many other people. But the book worked considerably less well for me at the level of weaving those insights and ideas together, and as a whole piece of work. Some of that might be connected with the fact that the form of it is more akin to a scholarly book than I was initially expecting. Not that I have anything against scholarly books, and I'll often stand up for even quite obscure ones having something useful in them for movements. But form and underlying presumptions about how knowledge should be produced still matter and I think a deliberate step away from academic ways of dealing with ideas would've strengthened this book. Related to that, I think it would be a more useful tool if it focused less on situating itself in this or that intellectual lineage and more on exploring actual experiments and conversations within movements around these issues. Even saying that feels tremendously unfair, because *some* aspects of it are grounded very firmly in movement realities – as I said, its characterization of its core problem hit home, and you could tell that plenty of its observations were hard-won through difficult presonal experience. As well, at multiple points through the text it explicitly emphasizes the importance of the situated and the concrete, and of respecting complexity. But that fell away all too often. Different movements would be cited to show this or that, but often in ways that felt fairly superficial. Despite its injunctions against doing so, sometimes it felt like specific experiences were being generalized in unhelpful ways, without due attention to how it all could work quite differently for other people situated in other ways. It would have been strengthened, I think, by doing more to engage with knowledge produced by and emerging from movements *on their own terms*, including far more engagement with instances where that would not sit easily with the book's own analysis. And I know it's a hard thing to do, but it would also have been strengthened by doing more to not just refer to but to describe in sensuous, concrete, material detail specific examples, ideally lots of them, of how the phenomena discussed in the book have played out in different contexts. So I think there are insights and ideas in this book that are generative and that I hope spark further discussion of what is a very important issue, but it also illustrates the need for ongoing work – and here I'm talking about work that falls on all of us who take movement-generated knowledge seriously – to figure out how to draw out and talk about the kinds of deeply situationally embedded and complex experiences of everyday life, including everyday life in movement contexts, that form the core of this book's concerns.
January 9, 2022
the anti-authoritarian manifesto the left needs
compassionate and brimming with life
unstuck from the amber trickle of domination
lives unlived in futures yet to arrive
i want life lived now
in emergence and encounter
//
pure negation cannot sustain us. without a base of joy, we have no defenses against self-destruction, burnout, paranoia and resentment.
we can't heal each other with pain, only with love. if we have nothing to offer beyond critique, nothing genuinely worth cherishing, then we're reactive creatures, reproducing the very cruelties that have impoverished us materially and psychically.
inverting this power relation does not destroy it. it robs us of our own positive power, our joy of life. we become mirrors of our oppressors, desiring not only domination over them, but over our allies as well.
we have to bury the cop both within and without us. we have to decolonise our thoughts, behaviours and relationships if we want any chance of thriving and transforming this world.
we need love. not the love of passive etiquette or tolerance, but of expansion and difference. a love that transcends the familial and the commonplace. an inclusion of radical alterity and the infinity of the possible. a creative love that resists, endures and revives us from domination, reaction and the narrowing down of all lifeworlds.
a joyful militancy xx
//
ch3 (on trust) and ch4 (on distrust) really shine. the other chapters are a bit abstract (for a book ostensibly about prefigurative politics) and repetitive. would have loved more concrete examples. but it's a fantastic and much needed book to combat the misery politics of our times. the piteous fascists within us all.
//
"The crisis is not coming: it is already here . . . and Empire is administering the wreckage."
compassionate and brimming with life
unstuck from the amber trickle of domination
lives unlived in futures yet to arrive
i want life lived now
in emergence and encounter
//
pure negation cannot sustain us. without a base of joy, we have no defenses against self-destruction, burnout, paranoia and resentment.
we can't heal each other with pain, only with love. if we have nothing to offer beyond critique, nothing genuinely worth cherishing, then we're reactive creatures, reproducing the very cruelties that have impoverished us materially and psychically.
inverting this power relation does not destroy it. it robs us of our own positive power, our joy of life. we become mirrors of our oppressors, desiring not only domination over them, but over our allies as well.
we have to bury the cop both within and without us. we have to decolonise our thoughts, behaviours and relationships if we want any chance of thriving and transforming this world.
we need love. not the love of passive etiquette or tolerance, but of expansion and difference. a love that transcends the familial and the commonplace. an inclusion of radical alterity and the infinity of the possible. a creative love that resists, endures and revives us from domination, reaction and the narrowing down of all lifeworlds.
a joyful militancy xx
//
ch3 (on trust) and ch4 (on distrust) really shine. the other chapters are a bit abstract (for a book ostensibly about prefigurative politics) and repetitive. would have loved more concrete examples. but it's a fantastic and much needed book to combat the misery politics of our times. the piteous fascists within us all.
//
"The crisis is not coming: it is already here . . . and Empire is administering the wreckage."
June 6, 2020
Beautiful, cogent, crucial. Joyful Militancy is one of the most important books I've ever read. This book describes inflexible tendencies that have contributed to the demise of social justice movements, and encourages us to shift our perspective and behaviors to avoid those pitfalls. Had I read it ten years earlier, I could've prevented SO much pain and despair in local justice movements. If folks in the 60s-80s had these ideas crystallized, we would live in a different world today. Don't delay-- read it!
Regarding folks concerned about its overly academic language, I disagree and found it very accessible as someone with limited formal schooling. You definitely do need direct experience as a social justice organizer to grasp the authors' broad descriptions of rigid radicalism, though.
Regarding folks concerned about its overly academic language, I disagree and found it very accessible as someone with limited formal schooling. You definitely do need direct experience as a social justice organizer to grasp the authors' broad descriptions of rigid radicalism, though.
January 22, 2025
i picked up this book because the title is seriously written for me. with israel going on their neverending hysterical rampage, mulyono building an increasingly repressive dynasty, capitalism squeezing the world dry, femicide getting out of hand, and whatever else in the world that is happening, staying resistant is what i wish for myself as long as i can maintain a clear conscience. the moment my mind stopped resisting i think that's it tbh, it's over for me. i don't want to be such a complacent person and i hope that won't ever happen by any means. but is disliking the idea enough to stop it from happening? do i have that much control over my fatty thinking organ? people are malleable and i'm no exception. so joyful militancy: building thriving resistance in toxic times? you mean this will help me build thriving resistance in toxic times? hell yeah that ticks like 13 of my 10 boxes.
this has been on my list for years, to be honest, but reading this now couldn't be any more timely. this helped me put several things into perspective and resonated with what i have thought for myself already (and i love to be validated like that, so that was fun). this made me hopeful too even if only by encouraging the belief that there is always something to be done or at least tried out. it's not a hard read as well, there's nothing rigorous or too academic. it's accessible and many points hit home as i reflected the author's ideas on my own experiences. i recommend this to anyone in this trying time!
some key takeaways:
- joyful militancy here is defined as a community-based resistance. it draws heavily on a friendship, family, neighbourhood etc so close-knit it's transformative; you would transform each other in that social and intellectual intimacy or you would want to transform to protect it. ultimately this sentiment can be extended to other communities sharing the values or similar experiences with the og community. it's not in contrast to rigid militancy or large-scale movements that rise in an emergency, but it's proposed to be more sustainable
- any oppressive entities such as settler colonialism, white supremacy, the state, capitalism, ableism, ageism, and heteropatriarchy are labelled the Empire here. joy is different from the happiness the Empire endorses. Empire's happiness is often set as a goal. this can lead to repression when a group of people fails to conform to this rigid 'happiness'. the authors defined joy as the increasing ability to affect and be affected. it's similar to being passionate, i guess? this is in contrast with avoiding bad feelings to emulate 'happiness'
- optimisme dan pesimisme itu sama dari sisi bikin nyaman dalam kepastian, keduanya bisa bikin ga responsif. lebih baik terbuka aja dengan ketidakpastian, tapi dengan mata yg lebih awas.
"uncertainty is where we need to begin, because experimentation and curiosity is part of what has been stolen from us" - p35
- yes, anger and rage can be informative!
- this book draws heavily on Spinoza's ethics which asks "what is one capable of" instead of "what should one do". this calls for attunement, participation and experimentation, starts with learning to feel more deeply and leads to the willingness to nurture and defend relationships
"this is neither self-interest nor moral altruism. it is relational ethics." -p84
- pokoknya: be active in shaping your attachment, nurture relationships of mutual love and support (and nope the Empire won't love you back, go for the people!), hold your ground in uncertainty and complexity, and just try to do what you can! kalo kata user orethebrave di twitter, "you need your village and your village needs you"!
this has been on my list for years, to be honest, but reading this now couldn't be any more timely. this helped me put several things into perspective and resonated with what i have thought for myself already (and i love to be validated like that, so that was fun). this made me hopeful too even if only by encouraging the belief that there is always something to be done or at least tried out. it's not a hard read as well, there's nothing rigorous or too academic. it's accessible and many points hit home as i reflected the author's ideas on my own experiences. i recommend this to anyone in this trying time!
some key takeaways:
- joyful militancy here is defined as a community-based resistance. it draws heavily on a friendship, family, neighbourhood etc so close-knit it's transformative; you would transform each other in that social and intellectual intimacy or you would want to transform to protect it. ultimately this sentiment can be extended to other communities sharing the values or similar experiences with the og community. it's not in contrast to rigid militancy or large-scale movements that rise in an emergency, but it's proposed to be more sustainable
- any oppressive entities such as settler colonialism, white supremacy, the state, capitalism, ableism, ageism, and heteropatriarchy are labelled the Empire here. joy is different from the happiness the Empire endorses. Empire's happiness is often set as a goal. this can lead to repression when a group of people fails to conform to this rigid 'happiness'. the authors defined joy as the increasing ability to affect and be affected. it's similar to being passionate, i guess? this is in contrast with avoiding bad feelings to emulate 'happiness'
- optimisme dan pesimisme itu sama dari sisi bikin nyaman dalam kepastian, keduanya bisa bikin ga responsif. lebih baik terbuka aja dengan ketidakpastian, tapi dengan mata yg lebih awas.
"uncertainty is where we need to begin, because experimentation and curiosity is part of what has been stolen from us" - p35
- yes, anger and rage can be informative!
- this book draws heavily on Spinoza's ethics which asks "what is one capable of" instead of "what should one do". this calls for attunement, participation and experimentation, starts with learning to feel more deeply and leads to the willingness to nurture and defend relationships
"this is neither self-interest nor moral altruism. it is relational ethics." -p84
- pokoknya: be active in shaping your attachment, nurture relationships of mutual love and support (and nope the Empire won't love you back, go for the people!), hold your ground in uncertainty and complexity, and just try to do what you can! kalo kata user orethebrave di twitter, "you need your village and your village needs you"!
May 3, 2018
Sort of feel like I can’t really write anything here without possibility violating the spirit of the book...lol
Let me simply say, some parts of it were so very good (in my opinion) and some parts were mundane (in my opinion) and some parts, I could have done without.
In the end, I would recommend it to a whole lot of people (especially those with experience on the left). I guarantee you will see things discussed that you have thought about.
Let me simply say, some parts of it were so very good (in my opinion) and some parts were mundane (in my opinion) and some parts, I could have done without.
In the end, I would recommend it to a whole lot of people (especially those with experience on the left). I guarantee you will see things discussed that you have thought about.
Read
January 4, 2018this was basically not at all what i expected - heavily philosophy-based and that just isn't my jam, though it did make me reexamine how i define joy. hoping to find a more accessible book that deals with burnout and finding your place.
November 4, 2025
Me encantó este libro, resulta revelador. Desearía que más personas que habitamos colectividades que luchan por alguna causa social se aproximen a él. Siento que no tiene desperdicio.
September 25, 2025
In August I went to the National DSA Convention in Chicago, where several radical bookstores and small presses were tabling. At the table for Pilsen Community Books I picked up a cute sticker that says “Always Carry A Book” and a copy of Nick Montgomery and carla bergman’s Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times. I successfully talked the book group into reading it with me, and am very excited to discuss it this weekend because it definitely seems like the kind of book that should be read in a group and not just off on one’s own.
Joyful Militancy takes as its subject the problem of “rigid radicalism,” a phenomenon that anyone who has spent a lot of time in organizing spaces or social-justice/leftish-flavored non-organizing spaces with pretensions of activism (such as: certain parts of the internet) will instantly recognize, even if you are the person doing it (because other people are probably doing rigid radicalism for flavors other than yours, and it’s easier to see when it’s not you). Due to the instant recognizability it is possibly not necessary to actually define rigid radicalism, but Montgomery and bergman aren’t going to fall into any dumb “vampire’s castle” type traps of just assuming you’ve got the exact same experiences and take they do on how The Vibes Are Bad, Man. Instead, they give a whole intellectual and philosophical history of the concept, tracing it to earlier lines of thinking about the problem of bad vibes in leftist/left-ish spaces, including Spinoza’s writings about “sad militancy” and Eve Sedgwick’s writings about paranoid readings.
As a paranoid reader of writings about social justice in a way that I wasn’t eight years ago, I particularly appreciated how self-aware this book was about the possible pitfalls of critiquing rigid radicalism and exploring the book’s positive concept of joyful militancy (which is also defined and contextualized in a philosophical and historical tradition, all very interesting stuff, lots of Spinoza). The authors are careful to stress that they don’t want joyful militancy to turn into another duty or demand, which I appreciate. I have a distinct memory of planning an action and a comrade made a perfectly good point about adding a fun element to it since, he said, we didn’t often really make a point of showing our joy in antifascist work, and I remember having an instant negative reaction, like “We’ve got enough shit to do to pull this action off and now we have to add ‘show our joy’ to the to-do list?” This was deeply unfair to the comrade, who was actually making a good suggestion. But you see how the psychological trap works–the authors of the book have a good long section trying to separate out joy from happiness, the thing we are constitutionally mandated to continually be in pursuit of, and that companies try to take away from us for the purpose of selling it back for money. At the end of the day the terminology used to differentiate things into two separate concepts is less important than understanding the process by which supposedly freeing concepts become tiresome when they become duties or expectations. (See also: my experiences of people being “supportive” of me exploring “my” sexuality and being confused and hurt when I experienced this “support” as pressuring and invasive.)
I said in my review of Emergent Strategy that I have a hard time trusting any writing about proper leftist behavior that isn’t 90% caveats and doesn’t treat its readers like they’re stupid. I’m pleased to report that this book does seem to hit the “90% caveats” benchmark, which diffused my incipient panic attack well enough that I didn’t even mind that they treated the audience like it was intelligent enough to understand philosophy. I found some of the book a little vague but I found myself forgiving that when they discussed how they were anticipating various critiques of the book, including that it might be too vague or theoretical. I think the point they were making was that all this internalized critique and the endless ways in which leftists critique everything was generally kind of overkill, but it made me trust that they knew what they were talking about and they weren’t so naive as to think that their writing was so special and correct that it would magically get exempted from the bad leftist dynamics.
That said! This book does have some meat to it, especially in the back half. I really enjoyed their interviews with people who admitted to having gotten sucked into rigid radicalism, and why engaging in it is attractive to some people, and the very real places of hurt and trauma that can cause people to use it as a protection mechanism. The authors are good at hitting the balance of explaining the sympathetic origins of the behavior without then concluding that it isn’t a problem and actually the problem is people thinking it's a problem. They are also very clear about stressing that this isn’t an issue of one tendency or another; tendencies have their own ways of having it manifest but it’s basically the same shit every time, whether it manifests as liberal moralism or anti-liberal moralism, a totalizing demand for organizational discipline or a totalizing demand for individual autonomy (there’s an interesting snippet of an interview with a recovered “manarchist” about his realization that all his high theory bullshit about not being controlled by the state just looked to a lot of people like another angry white guy doing whatever the fuck he wanted). Interviewees talk about the important of celebrating the small wins and the partial wins, and the deadening effect of the reflexive leftist habit to always stop to remind people that whatever today’s win is Isn’t Good Enough because it has not fully dismantled all oppression and brought us to anarchocommunist utopia (looking at you, all the people who rushed to publish relentlessly correct takes about how Zohran Mamdani’s primary win isn’t the revolution. WE KNOW, aren’t you exhausted with yourself yet?).
This book is part of a series called “anarchist interventions” and as such it pretty clearly is intended for anarchists, but I know plenty of non-anarchist socialists who have gotten value from this book and as a non-anarchist socialist I also think it’s a really worthwhile read. I think Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba’s Let This Radicalize You still has my top spot for Most Important Reading About Not Being That Person In Meetings but this is still a really valuable addition to the conversation about how to do leftism that doesn’t suck. Now I’ve just got to come up with some really good discussion questions for Sunday.
Originally posted at Joy, freedom, ethics, and other elusive notions.
Joyful Militancy takes as its subject the problem of “rigid radicalism,” a phenomenon that anyone who has spent a lot of time in organizing spaces or social-justice/leftish-flavored non-organizing spaces with pretensions of activism (such as: certain parts of the internet) will instantly recognize, even if you are the person doing it (because other people are probably doing rigid radicalism for flavors other than yours, and it’s easier to see when it’s not you). Due to the instant recognizability it is possibly not necessary to actually define rigid radicalism, but Montgomery and bergman aren’t going to fall into any dumb “vampire’s castle” type traps of just assuming you’ve got the exact same experiences and take they do on how The Vibes Are Bad, Man. Instead, they give a whole intellectual and philosophical history of the concept, tracing it to earlier lines of thinking about the problem of bad vibes in leftist/left-ish spaces, including Spinoza’s writings about “sad militancy” and Eve Sedgwick’s writings about paranoid readings.
As a paranoid reader of writings about social justice in a way that I wasn’t eight years ago, I particularly appreciated how self-aware this book was about the possible pitfalls of critiquing rigid radicalism and exploring the book’s positive concept of joyful militancy (which is also defined and contextualized in a philosophical and historical tradition, all very interesting stuff, lots of Spinoza). The authors are careful to stress that they don’t want joyful militancy to turn into another duty or demand, which I appreciate. I have a distinct memory of planning an action and a comrade made a perfectly good point about adding a fun element to it since, he said, we didn’t often really make a point of showing our joy in antifascist work, and I remember having an instant negative reaction, like “We’ve got enough shit to do to pull this action off and now we have to add ‘show our joy’ to the to-do list?” This was deeply unfair to the comrade, who was actually making a good suggestion. But you see how the psychological trap works–the authors of the book have a good long section trying to separate out joy from happiness, the thing we are constitutionally mandated to continually be in pursuit of, and that companies try to take away from us for the purpose of selling it back for money. At the end of the day the terminology used to differentiate things into two separate concepts is less important than understanding the process by which supposedly freeing concepts become tiresome when they become duties or expectations. (See also: my experiences of people being “supportive” of me exploring “my” sexuality and being confused and hurt when I experienced this “support” as pressuring and invasive.)
I said in my review of Emergent Strategy that I have a hard time trusting any writing about proper leftist behavior that isn’t 90% caveats and doesn’t treat its readers like they’re stupid. I’m pleased to report that this book does seem to hit the “90% caveats” benchmark, which diffused my incipient panic attack well enough that I didn’t even mind that they treated the audience like it was intelligent enough to understand philosophy. I found some of the book a little vague but I found myself forgiving that when they discussed how they were anticipating various critiques of the book, including that it might be too vague or theoretical. I think the point they were making was that all this internalized critique and the endless ways in which leftists critique everything was generally kind of overkill, but it made me trust that they knew what they were talking about and they weren’t so naive as to think that their writing was so special and correct that it would magically get exempted from the bad leftist dynamics.
That said! This book does have some meat to it, especially in the back half. I really enjoyed their interviews with people who admitted to having gotten sucked into rigid radicalism, and why engaging in it is attractive to some people, and the very real places of hurt and trauma that can cause people to use it as a protection mechanism. The authors are good at hitting the balance of explaining the sympathetic origins of the behavior without then concluding that it isn’t a problem and actually the problem is people thinking it's a problem. They are also very clear about stressing that this isn’t an issue of one tendency or another; tendencies have their own ways of having it manifest but it’s basically the same shit every time, whether it manifests as liberal moralism or anti-liberal moralism, a totalizing demand for organizational discipline or a totalizing demand for individual autonomy (there’s an interesting snippet of an interview with a recovered “manarchist” about his realization that all his high theory bullshit about not being controlled by the state just looked to a lot of people like another angry white guy doing whatever the fuck he wanted). Interviewees talk about the important of celebrating the small wins and the partial wins, and the deadening effect of the reflexive leftist habit to always stop to remind people that whatever today’s win is Isn’t Good Enough because it has not fully dismantled all oppression and brought us to anarchocommunist utopia (looking at you, all the people who rushed to publish relentlessly correct takes about how Zohran Mamdani’s primary win isn’t the revolution. WE KNOW, aren’t you exhausted with yourself yet?).
This book is part of a series called “anarchist interventions” and as such it pretty clearly is intended for anarchists, but I know plenty of non-anarchist socialists who have gotten value from this book and as a non-anarchist socialist I also think it’s a really worthwhile read. I think Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba’s Let This Radicalize You still has my top spot for Most Important Reading About Not Being That Person In Meetings but this is still a really valuable addition to the conversation about how to do leftism that doesn’t suck. Now I’ve just got to come up with some really good discussion questions for Sunday.
Originally posted at Joy, freedom, ethics, and other elusive notions.
August 25, 2024
j’dois me rattraper pour ce que j’ai pas log depuis des mois, je sais même pas exactement quand j’ai lu ça mais c’était pendant l’hiver. anyways j’ai bien aimé, j’en garde une bonne impression, j’ai ps grand chose à dire d’autre
Read
June 17, 2025intéressant, ça met des mots sur certains sentiments, et invite à repenser non pas l'engagement en soi mais sa posture dans une perspective relationnelle
June 4, 2023
This is one of the best books I've read. Definitely want to translate it into Polish.
May 28, 2024
Joy! Joy with a capital J! I’ll be thinking about this book for a while.
Read
February 6, 2025Gonna try to incorporate what I learned from this book into my day to day life because there was a lot of very helpful framing. Main takeaways were that joy is different from happiness- it is becoming capable of doing or feeling something new, militancy is a combativeness and a willingness to fight, and responsibility is infinite- we should think of it as response-ability or our ability to respond as conditions change. I have both witnessed and perpetrated what the authors call "rigid radicalism" in many of the spaces where I organize and this book has helped me grapple with some big questions and left me with other new and exciting things to ponder.
January 10, 2019
Another excellent contribution from the Institute for Anarchist Studies/AK Press. An interesting blend of academic research/sourcing and contemporary interviews, Joyful Militancy reminds us of the dangers of "rigid radicalism" and offers ideas and examples for bringing joy into our political work. "Joy is never a duty and never something imposed on other people... We are trying to affirm that joyful transformation is already happening, as an emergent power that undoes moralism and opens up new potentials, sometimes even beautifully. Joy subsists through common notions, which need to be held and tended in order to remain alive."
October 25, 2024
un llibre que te convida a allunyar-te del pensament rigid i t'anime a trobar noves formes de cuidar-se i celebrar en col•lectiu!!!
"Diría que porque quiero vivir, porque no quiero morir en vida, es que necesito de una colectividad en donde no solo haya certezas mínimas, sino también dudas y no-saber; donde radicalmente podamos pensar y repensar cada vez el sentido de lo que hacemos, y no se den por hecho las identidades. Un ejercicio para abrazar la finitud de las colectividades... porque nunca son para siempre. Ahí está la clave: que las colectividades no sean para siempre nos ayuda a dar fin y hacer otros comienzos."
"Diría que porque quiero vivir, porque no quiero morir en vida, es que necesito de una colectividad en donde no solo haya certezas mínimas, sino también dudas y no-saber; donde radicalmente podamos pensar y repensar cada vez el sentido de lo que hacemos, y no se den por hecho las identidades. Un ejercicio para abrazar la finitud de las colectividades... porque nunca son para siempre. Ahí está la clave: que las colectividades no sean para siempre nos ayuda a dar fin y hacer otros comienzos."
May 21, 2025
3 mois pour arriver à lire ce bouquin mais c’était worth
Ça questionne beaucoup de pratiques et de postures dans nos milieux militants vis-à-vis du radicalisme rigide, et surtout ça replace le plus important à sa place : l’amour et qu’est-ce qu’on peut *faire et être ensemble*
Banger/20
Ça questionne beaucoup de pratiques et de postures dans nos milieux militants vis-à-vis du radicalisme rigide, et surtout ça replace le plus important à sa place : l’amour et qu’est-ce qu’on peut *faire et être ensemble*
Banger/20
February 7, 2025
lots of introspection w this one,,, and great book club convos <3 :,)
April 14, 2025
Amazing book, of course, not an exact guideline, but one people should consider when in radical spaces. Joy is essential to a movement that can feel so angry.
September 20, 2020
really amazing read that centers the affirmative & relational as crucial parts of anti-authoritarianism, including the transformative potential of joy and 'sentipensar.' helpful if you feel stuck in what they term "rigid radicalism"
February 13, 2022
Aku seringkali dihadapkan dengan perasaan inferior dan pertanyaan terus menerus: apakah aku cukup "progresif" dan "militan"? Apa aku bisa setara dengan teman-temanku yang vokal memperjuangkan isu-isu yang sejatinya juga kuperjuangkan? Jika aku tak terlihat sevokal itu di media sosial, apa itu berarti aku tak peduli? Apa pekerjaanku yang membersamai orang-orang desa juga berarti sesuatu jika dibandingkan dengan pekerjaan kawan-kawanku yang bergelut pada lingkup dan wacana yang lebih besar? Apa yang disebut sebagai aktivisme yang ideal? Apa saja parameternya?
Dari buku ini aku menyadari bahwa pertanyaan-pertanyaan sejenis ini sangatlah valid dipertanyakan oleh orang yang sekiranya mengafiliasi diri berada dalam "gerakan". Ada tendensi untuk merasa kecil, ada udara yang terasa berbeda dari mereka yang menganggap diri lebih radikal. Inilah yang disebut sebagai rigid radicalism, suatu kesenangan dari perasaan lebih radikal dari yang lain, atau perasaan khawatir menjadi seseorang yang tidak cukup radikal. Tentu ini berbahaya, sebab ia kerap mengaburkan siapa musuh yang kita lawan bersama. Akibatnya, justru gerakan menjadi sangat rawan konflik horizontal dan terpecah belah karena ada perasaan lebih atau kurang radikal dari yang lainnya. Merasa familiar dengan situasi ini? Aku sih, yes.
Untuk menghadapi rigid radicalism, buku ini menawarkan suatu proses alternatif yakni joyful militancy, yang memperbolehkan kita untuk terus mengembangkan joy dalam militansi kita, berlandaskan perasan percaya satu sama lain dan keyakinan bahwa transformasi menuju masa depan yang lebih baik dapat dilakukan bersama-sama. "Joyful militancy is a dangerous, transformative, and experimental process, generated collectively and held gently."
Aku selalu memimpikan suatu proses transformatif yang memperbolehkanku dan orang-orang lainnya untuk melakukan hal-hal yang membawa joy, yang bagi Spinoza bukanlah suatu emosi, tetapi "an increase in one's power to affect and be affected. It is the capacity to do and feel more. As such, it is connected to creativity and the embrace of uncertainty." Aku memimpikan gelanggang yang membuatku tetap mampu tersenyum dan tertawa atas hal-hal kecil yang membuatku bahkan berdansa, tetapi dalam waktu yang sama tetap mengeratkan gandengan tangan satu sama lain untuk menjelang apa yang kami cita-citakan.
Aku mencoba untuk marah, tapi selalu ada sisi riang itu dalam diriku, yang mungkin kurang mampu diterima beberapa orang dalam gerakan. Sempat aku ingin mencoba terus menerus marah dan mencitrakannya di depan khalayak, tapi mungkin itu bukan sesuatu yang sepenuhnya tepat. Mungkin aku memang sebaiknya tetap memancarkan keriangan itu sambil aku juga bergerak melangkah; walaupun mungkin bukan di ruas jalan yang sama. Entah dapat diterima atau tidak oleh kawan aktivis lainnya, tapi semoga mereka tahu bahwa aku juga berjalan bersama mereka.
Terima kasih untuk kawan-kawan Teman Belajar Bakudapan, berkat pembacaan bersama atas satu bab dalam buku ini, aku jadi meniatkan untuk membacanya secara keseluruhan. Terima kasih telah mengembalikan rasa percaya pada diri, bahwa apa yang aku lakukan sesungguhnya tidaklah salah.
Dari buku ini aku menyadari bahwa pertanyaan-pertanyaan sejenis ini sangatlah valid dipertanyakan oleh orang yang sekiranya mengafiliasi diri berada dalam "gerakan". Ada tendensi untuk merasa kecil, ada udara yang terasa berbeda dari mereka yang menganggap diri lebih radikal. Inilah yang disebut sebagai rigid radicalism, suatu kesenangan dari perasaan lebih radikal dari yang lain, atau perasaan khawatir menjadi seseorang yang tidak cukup radikal. Tentu ini berbahaya, sebab ia kerap mengaburkan siapa musuh yang kita lawan bersama. Akibatnya, justru gerakan menjadi sangat rawan konflik horizontal dan terpecah belah karena ada perasaan lebih atau kurang radikal dari yang lainnya. Merasa familiar dengan situasi ini? Aku sih, yes.
Untuk menghadapi rigid radicalism, buku ini menawarkan suatu proses alternatif yakni joyful militancy, yang memperbolehkan kita untuk terus mengembangkan joy dalam militansi kita, berlandaskan perasan percaya satu sama lain dan keyakinan bahwa transformasi menuju masa depan yang lebih baik dapat dilakukan bersama-sama. "Joyful militancy is a dangerous, transformative, and experimental process, generated collectively and held gently."
Aku selalu memimpikan suatu proses transformatif yang memperbolehkanku dan orang-orang lainnya untuk melakukan hal-hal yang membawa joy, yang bagi Spinoza bukanlah suatu emosi, tetapi "an increase in one's power to affect and be affected. It is the capacity to do and feel more. As such, it is connected to creativity and the embrace of uncertainty." Aku memimpikan gelanggang yang membuatku tetap mampu tersenyum dan tertawa atas hal-hal kecil yang membuatku bahkan berdansa, tetapi dalam waktu yang sama tetap mengeratkan gandengan tangan satu sama lain untuk menjelang apa yang kami cita-citakan.
Aku mencoba untuk marah, tapi selalu ada sisi riang itu dalam diriku, yang mungkin kurang mampu diterima beberapa orang dalam gerakan. Sempat aku ingin mencoba terus menerus marah dan mencitrakannya di depan khalayak, tapi mungkin itu bukan sesuatu yang sepenuhnya tepat. Mungkin aku memang sebaiknya tetap memancarkan keriangan itu sambil aku juga bergerak melangkah; walaupun mungkin bukan di ruas jalan yang sama. Entah dapat diterima atau tidak oleh kawan aktivis lainnya, tapi semoga mereka tahu bahwa aku juga berjalan bersama mereka.
Terima kasih untuk kawan-kawan Teman Belajar Bakudapan, berkat pembacaan bersama atas satu bab dalam buku ini, aku jadi meniatkan untuk membacanya secara keseluruhan. Terima kasih telah mengembalikan rasa percaya pada diri, bahwa apa yang aku lakukan sesungguhnya tidaklah salah.
November 15, 2025
Once again, a well-intentioned book that I hate to review because I just...I didn't like it. Maybe I'm too deep in this world. Maybe I've heard the word "emergent" so many times it makes me scream. Maybe I'm actually so experienced in progressive political advocacy and leftist political thought I know more than the authors and see where they missed the mark? That last might be stretching it, but it is how I felt reading the book. I kept cringing at things I felt they had gotten wrong. Also, I'm not an anarchist, I'm a leftist, and it's because I'm too rooted in political science to believe that anarchy is possible. One of the discussions I have with my students about government as normative explores how anarchy is always temporary because a "strong man" political framework always rises out of it and results in tyranny.
They didn't get EVERYTHING wrong, but in fact the portions I found the most impactful and insightful were the direct quotes they included. The authors are not too proud to do their research and quote the giants who have created and embedded community care and collective liberation in how we do political activism. This is where the book shines, is as a compendium of intellectual elders.
I did not finish all the way. Read most of it. Gleaned what I could. Celebrated when it made sense. Copied the direct quotes from other authors. Remembered that we're all still learning how to do life and humility is necessary. Back to work.
They didn't get EVERYTHING wrong, but in fact the portions I found the most impactful and insightful were the direct quotes they included. The authors are not too proud to do their research and quote the giants who have created and embedded community care and collective liberation in how we do political activism. This is where the book shines, is as a compendium of intellectual elders.
I did not finish all the way. Read most of it. Gleaned what I could. Celebrated when it made sense. Copied the direct quotes from other authors. Remembered that we're all still learning how to do life and humility is necessary. Back to work.
January 19, 2018
Anyone who has ever been involved in any kind of activism/organizing/leftist group can attest to the fact that those spaces can sometimes be incredibly rigid, unwelcoming, paranoid, and just depressing. This book is an attempt to ask why those spaces become that way and if there are better ways of organizing, better ways of trying to make the world better. I very much agree with the problems that they point out and the central ideas - That relationships are more important than ideology. That the everyday is crucial. That we need joy in what we are doing or we will fail. That we need to leave room for personal and collective transformation and not expect everyone to be exactly in the right place (as though we know what that is). If I were another type of person, I would probably give it another star. But I am at a place where I really want everything to be as plainly and succinctly stated as possible. I think it is my old age setting in. And I found myself skimming a lot of the repetitive and/or overly philosophical parts. (There was a lot of Spinoza.) Still, this is an important conversation to be having and worth a read.
Read
February 19, 2018instructive and articulating a lot of what i've been thinking of lately w/r/t community and cooperative alternative spaces, the erotic as transcendent spiritual connectivity, and receptivity to surprise and ongoing capability for transformation... like good activist texts should do this text made me feel led, like an opening to a conversation, rather than answer, excited to read and talk and be changed by the movements and ppl around me
April 22, 2025
Love having my brain exploded by "Joyful Militancy". It hides that it is an introduction to Spinozan philosophy. And it tries to introduce a new way of being progressive.
Where happiness is the enemy of joy and "the pursuit of happiness" becomes a trap, the same with "I'm happy where I am". Because happiness is not an end goal, it's an indication you're heading the right way.
Where friendship and freedom are the same. And we're "just friends" is a direct attack on our freedom. And to be free is not to be alone, to be free is to belong.
Where there are no negative emotions because we are humans who are meant to feel.
Where trust and responsibility is given and not earned. Which I absolutely love because this is what I already strive towards. But as such it opens up for harm, intentional or unintentional. So joyful militancy has to build collective capacity to build, maintain and repair trust.
But most importantly a reminder that there are no answers, because answers are stagnation. We should always wonder, search, question and evolve. This is joy. To become rigid, stagnate, to be conservative, to think "I now know enough" or to believe "everyone is doing it wrong" is to give up, there's always more progress.
As a literary work, it's not the best, but the ideas are a pure joy...
hehe
Where happiness is the enemy of joy and "the pursuit of happiness" becomes a trap, the same with "I'm happy where I am". Because happiness is not an end goal, it's an indication you're heading the right way.
Where friendship and freedom are the same. And we're "just friends" is a direct attack on our freedom. And to be free is not to be alone, to be free is to belong.
Where there are no negative emotions because we are humans who are meant to feel.
Where trust and responsibility is given and not earned. Which I absolutely love because this is what I already strive towards. But as such it opens up for harm, intentional or unintentional. So joyful militancy has to build collective capacity to build, maintain and repair trust.
But most importantly a reminder that there are no answers, because answers are stagnation. We should always wonder, search, question and evolve. This is joy. To become rigid, stagnate, to be conservative, to think "I now know enough" or to believe "everyone is doing it wrong" is to give up, there's always more progress.
As a literary work, it's not the best, but the ideas are a pure joy...
hehe
Read
September 19, 20182018 has been a thrilling and exhausting year to be alive. Joyful Militancy has been helping me make sense of it. Montgomery and bergman describe trends and practices all over the world where people are coming together with a shared devotion to being more actively engaged in the world and with one another. These people are not motivated by rigid and abstract political ideology, but by joy. For the authors, joy isn’t the same as happiness; joy describes the capacity for people to change, grow, and feel new things. It’s the capacity to build strong and supportive relationships in one’s community and across difference. From these joyful relationships, deep changes can occur in the fabric of everyday life. This little book is a real balm for the vortex of political bros yelling at each other about Karl Marx and the never-ending Twitter fights about who has the hottest and most perfect take on that day’s political crisis. It is a reminder that in order to build a better world, we need to truly support our communities and to let ourselves be supported by them. —Nina (excerpted from Bookish's Staff Reads)
November 2, 2025
This book turned out to be different from what I expected, and I feel ambivalent about it. The book was for me a good way to deal and understand the culture in activist movements, and my issues with them, as well as providing some thoughts for future ways of engaging. The way that they centralize relationships in struggle was great, and sometimes overlooked. I do feel that we can only keep the struggle going if we have community. The length of the book is nice, although perhaps it could be a bit shorter. Reading the book, one leaves it not with an incredible insight, except the fact that live is messy and complex. Our interactions, ideas and thoughts are constantly changing, and we need to attune ourselves to that. Some words in the book are a bit hard to understand and unpack; I still don't get militancy. Anyhow, I am happy to have read it and it has made me think about how we can better shape our struggle. Thanks.
April 15, 2022
4.5 stars
I enjoyed this book and felt affirmed by its comments and critiques of some pitfalls of leftist and/or ‘progressive’ spaces. An engaging read that brings a variety of voices into conversation with each other. A solid mix of ideas I was familiar with and some new concepts for me, I found it easy to synthesize. I think most people with find much to both agree and disagree with here, and at times I felt that the most critical questions, as well as actionable ideas for addressing problems, were just a step further than addressed and remained disappointingly unexplored.
I enjoyed this book and felt affirmed by its comments and critiques of some pitfalls of leftist and/or ‘progressive’ spaces. An engaging read that brings a variety of voices into conversation with each other. A solid mix of ideas I was familiar with and some new concepts for me, I found it easy to synthesize. I think most people with find much to both agree and disagree with here, and at times I felt that the most critical questions, as well as actionable ideas for addressing problems, were just a step further than addressed and remained disappointingly unexplored.
October 10, 2022
I like the framework they set up, essentially trying to shift the focus within activism from ideology to relationships.
It’s a bit slow to start and does little to define the “Empire” which includes heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism and i think some other systems. I had a basic understanding of what they were talking about but it was a bit vague.
Still, an interesting read that has made me reflect on my own experience among activist circles.
It’s a bit slow to start and does little to define the “Empire” which includes heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism and i think some other systems. I had a basic understanding of what they were talking about but it was a bit vague.
Still, an interesting read that has made me reflect on my own experience among activist circles.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews