Marappachi Theatre
agitatejournalMarappachi is registered as a not-for-profit cultural organization. Founded by Late Poet Inquilab as the Founding President in 2006, it attempts to practice art and theatre that is relevant and contemporary. A. Mangai has been with the group right from its inception. The group addresses deeply ingrained prejudices in our society like caste, class and…
A. Mangai
agitatejournalA. Mangai is the pseudonym of Dr. V. Padma. She retired as Associate Professor in English from Stella Maris College, Chennai. She has been actively engaged in Tamil theatre as an actor, Director and Playwright for almost three decades. She hopes that her academic, activist and artistic selves can find a vibrant intersection. Her fields of interest…
A. Revathi
agitatejournalA. Revathi is transfeminist activist, writer and a crusader for LGBTIQA+ community in India. Her books The Truth About Me, A life in trans activism and Our Bodies Our Selves (Unarvum Uruvamum) are pioneering works on trans lives. Her career as a writer won her a place on the Columbia University Butler Library banner. She finds theatre a powerful art form.
Announcing AGITATE! Vol. 3 “Stories, Bodies, Movements” coming May 2021: Selections from Dreams as R-evolution by Coral Bijoux
agitatejournalWhen you want to enslave a people,You steal the ability to dream.And when you want to enslave a people,You destroy the ability to dream.And still, when you want slaves,The master has to remember his place.And the slave, hers.And the slave, his.And when you want to enslave a people,You introduce a fear that is embedded in…
Anna Selmeczi
agitatejournalAnna Selmeczi is a lecturer and the programme convener of the Masters in Southern Urbanism at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. Her work is grounded in social and political theory, and focuses on the connections between orders of knowledge and urban spaces, and how various forms of popular politics contest and transform these…
Setareh Ghoreishi
agitatejournalSetareh Ghoreishi is a graphic designer and multidisciplinary digital media artist. After receiving her B.F.A. in Graphic Design from the University of Art in Tehran, Iran, she moved to the United States where she currently lives. In her work, she investigates cultural disparities, most specifically between the United States and Iran. She acquired her MFA…
Tamilarasi Anandavalli
agitatejournalStatement in Solidarity with the People of Palestine
agitatejournalThe Editorial Collective of AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges, the Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle (ITSRC), and the faculty in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and condemn the Israeli state’s brutal settler colonial violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As…
Shav-vahini Ganga | Ganga, the Carrier of Corpses | શબવાહિની ગંગા | शव-वाहिनी गंगा , By Parul Khakhar
agitatejournalBy Parul Khakhar India is going through a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this second wave was long predicted by medical and scientific experts, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Prime Minister Modi boasted of how India had conquered the virus. The stories from the first wave—of thousands of migrant…
Shav-vahini Ganga | Ganga, the Carrier of Corpses | શબવાહિની ગંગા | शव-वाहिनी गंगा
agitatejournalby Parul Khakhar India is going through a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this second wave was long predicted by medical and scientific experts, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Prime Minister Modi boasted of how India had conquered the virus. The stories from the first wave—of thousands of migrant wage…
Memory Histories: I Am Not Your Data
agitatejournalBy Anjali Arondekar I am not your data, nor am I your vote bank,I am not your project, or any exotic museum object,I am not the soul waiting to be harvested,Nor am I the lab where your theories are tested,I am not your cannon fodder, or the invisible worker,or your entertainment at India habitat center,I…
The Black Radical Tradition Can Help Us Imagine a More Just World
agitatejournalby Brian Lozenski Thanks to Truthout and author Brian Lozenski for granting us the permission to reprint this article on AGITATE Now!. You can access the original article here, published originally on June 23, 2020. Just as quickly as protests mounted in cities and towns across the country after George Floyd joined the ever-growing…
My Palestinian Poem that “The New Yorker” Wouldn’t Publish
agitatejournalby Fady Joudah This piece was originally published in the LA Review of Books on June 7, 2021. RemoveYou who remove me from my houseare blind to your pastwhich never leaves you,yet you’re no moleto smell and sense what’s being doneto me now by you.Now, dilatory, attritional so that the pastis climate change and not…
Black Men’s Stories, By Peter London Global Dance Company
agitatejournalwith commentary from Terrence Pride Upon the backs of our ancestors we journey forward, as the light and fire they held for us expands into a greater present and still greater future. We must not let them down! Remember the tremendous brutality of mind, body, and spirit, they endured, that which still continues. Honor and…
Sci-Fi as Accessible Movement Building: A Review of Larissa Lai’s “The Tiger Flu”
agitatejournalby Chloe Dunston The Tiger Flu is set in the year 2145, which author Larissa Lai depicts as a “time after oil” divided by factions, gender, disease, and technology. After years of greedy leadership, environmental degradation, and the exhaustion of fossil fuels, Saltwater City and its outskirts stand alone in what was formerly Vancouver, Canada.…
NAPM Yuva Samvad: Young People’s Political Persecution and Resistance | NAPM युवा संवाद: युवाओं का राजनीतिक उत्पीड़न और प्रतिरोध
agitatejournalThis article is a summary of the National Alliance of People’s Movements‘ month-long campaign on ‘Young People’s Political Persecution and Resistance’ that took place in July 2021. This summary was originally published on NAPM Yuva Samvad:Towards Deepening Dialogues, Diversity and Democratic Values. In solidarity with all comrades facing political persecution and remembering human rights defender…
Sowing and cultivating solidarities: Imagining transnational and translocal solidarities through research and pedagogy
agitatejournalLink to Zoom recording of event “Sowing and cultivating solidarities: Imagining transnational and translocal solidarities through research and pedagogy” seeks to advance the collaborative work of envisioning and enacting scholarly, artistric, and pedagogical practices in search of justice. Jointly organized by the Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle (ITSRC) and AGITATE!: Unsettling Knowledges, this symposium aims…
Movie Screening and panel discussion: Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale
agitatejournal“Maadathy” unfolds the story of an adolescent girl born in an “unseeable” slave caste group but refuses to be defined by it. When: 15 October 2021, 9:15 -11:45 am (CDT) Hosts: GWSS and AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges Panelists: Leena Manimekalai (Director and writer), Ajmina Kassim (Actor), Semmalar Annam (Actor), Bhavana Goparaju (Producer), Prof. Jebaroja Singh (St.…
Talking Back to white “Burma Experts”
agitatejournalby Chu May Paing and Than Toe Aung In December 2018, Than Toe Aung attended a talk hosted by Parami Institute (now Parami University), self-proclaimed as “Myanmar’s first private, not-for-profit liberal arts and sciences university” in Yangon. The talk featured the well-known journalist Bertil Lintner covering Burma since the era of the former military regime…
Parul Khakhar
agitatejournalWafa Alsayed
agitatejournalMoving Memories: An Archive of Bangladeshi Queer Migrants in the US
agitatejournalCurated by Efadul Huq and Rasel Ahmed for SAADA Moving Memories is an archive of Bangladeshi Queer migrants in the US. The archive is hosted by SAADA (South Asian American Digital Archive) and was created in partnership with Queer Archives of the Bengal Delta. The exhibit centers the voices of ten Bangladeshi queer migrants whose…
“She has one thousand eyes, Our Mother Goddess Maadathy”: Exploring separation and invisible labor through Leena Manimekalai’s strategic deifications
agitatejournal
by Drishadwati Bargi Director Leena Manimekalai’s Maadathy: An Un-Fairy Tale (2021) belongs to a historical moment when anti-caste cinema and in extension an anti-caste audience have already acquired a vibrant presence in India and the diaspora, thanks to the works of Nagaraj Manjule, Mari Selvaraj, Pa. Ranjith, Neeraj Ghaywan among others. What is perhaps unique…
Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale– Screening and Panel Discussion
agitatejournalby Leena Manimekalai, Bhavana Goparaju, Ajmina Kassim, and Semmalar Annam in conversation with Roja Suganthy-Singh On October 15th, 2021, AGITATE! launched the North American tour of Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale in collaboration with the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota.1 The event included a screening of this film, followed…
No to War. For a Transnational Politics of Peace.
agitatejournalThe AGITATE! Editorial Collective supports the following statement: By TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL STRIKE PLATFORM Russian large-scale attack over Ukraine brings war among us. In these weeks we saw the escalation of tensions between world powers under the astonished eyes of those who are struggling to recover their lives from two years of pandemic. We…
Statement of Solidarity with the Ukrainian People & Anti-War Voices
agitatejournalThe AGITATE! Editorial Collective supports the following statement: By the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM India) Resist the Expansionism of US-led NATO & Anti-People Military Industrial Complex Working People’s Rights World Over Must Prevail Over War-Mongering Indian Government must ensure safe return of all trapped Indian citizens and take…
Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes: Introducing a Multipart Series on Remembering, Retelling, and Dreaming for Justice
agitatejournalConvened and co-edited by Richa Nagar and Ponni Arasu To invoke movements in search of justice is to summon many layers of lived existence—including motions, moments, rhythms, relationships, and visions—that are, by definition, fluid and uncontainable. What might it mean, then, to document or analyze a movement? Is it possible to hold and feel the…
Ponni Arasu
agitatejournalPonni Arasu hails from Chennai, India and now lives near the lagoon in Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka. Her work, in different places within the nation states of India and Sri Lanka, is an interwoven practice of making art – primarily embodied performance; studying and teaching history; thinking through, critiquing and working with the law;…
Kamala Vasuki
agitatejournalKamala Vasuki (Vasuki Jeyasankar) is a feminist activist and artist from the North and East of Sri Lanka. She has been part of women’s organizations and networks on the island since the late 1980s. She is a researcher, teacher and organizer on a range of issues of marginalised communities in the society where she lives. She organises on…
Doing History through Art: An Opening
agitatejournalBy Ponni Arasu and Kamala Vasuki *This is the first installment in the ongoing series Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes convened and co-edited by Ponni Arasu and Richa Nagar.* What does it mean to document history? What does it mean to document the history of a place that has lived through a prolonged war? What does…