Articles Archive

dastak

agitatejournal

Abdul Aijaz ghup andhere meṇ sāṇs letī nā-dīda khaṭ khaṭ tārīk duniyā meṇ sarsarātī havā kī dastak yeh kyā jahaṇ hai jahaṇ andhere na jāne kab se chahār jānib tane hue haiṇ na jāne kab se ham apnī ānkhoṇ kī raushnā’ī meṇ khvāb sīṇche savāl oṛhe sarāpā chup se thame hu’e haiṇ hamārī nazareṇ hamārī…

Introducing AGITATE! Volume 3: Stories, Bodies, Movements

Vol. 3 Editorial Collective

The editorial introduction for Volume 3: Stories, Bodies, Movements.

दस्तक

agitatejournal

अब्दुल ऐजाज़ घुप अँधेरे में सांस लेती ना-दीदा खट खट तारीक दुनिया में सरसराती हवा की दस्तक यह क्या जहाँ है जहाँ अँधेरे न जाने कब से चहार जानिब तने हुए हैं न जाने कब से हम अपनी आँखों की रौशनाई में ख़्वाब सींचे सवाल ओढ़े सरापा चुप से थमे हुए हैं हमारी नज़रें हमारी…

Volume 2: Unsettling Pedagogies

Hale Konitshek, Julie Santella, Keavy McFadden, Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer

AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges presents our second volume, “Unsettling Pedagogies.” Forever cognizant of our limitations as a journal that relies on a ‘domain’ based in a R-1 University in the United States, we highlight unsettling lessons in creative co-learning. We rearticulate AGITATE!’s commitment to building learning spaces where radical pedagogies for sociopolitical and epistemic justice are at the front and center of our praxis.

There’s Something in the Water

Tia-Simone Gardner

In her book A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, Kathryn Yussof (2018) describes a thick relationship between extractive capitalism, geologic time, and (anti)Blackness. She writes, “As the Anthropocene proclaims the language of species life – Anthropos – through a universalist geologic commons, it neatly erases histories of racism that were incubated through the regulatory structure of geologic relations.

Introducing AGITATE! Volume 5

Abdul Aijaz and Richa Nagar

The editorial introduction to AGITATE! Journal’s fifth volume—Stories and Ecologies of Violence: Walking Together in Solidarity and Silence/ Chup by Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz.

Introducing AGITATE! Volume 4 Breath and Death: COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and Virality

The AGITATE! Editorial Collective

The editorial introduction for Volume 4: Breath and Death

Editorial Introduction – Vol. 1

Beaudelaine Pierre, Hale Konitshek, Julie Santella, Keavy McFadden, Khoi Nguyen, Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer

We come together to write this inaugural editorial of AGITATE! after journeying as a collective for almost two years. Along this path, members of our group — including our contributing writers, artists, and activists — have joined in and advanced this vision and work at different times. Sometimes this coming together was planned and at other times it was sheer coincidence.

Rita Ponce de León – Artwork 1

Rita Ponce de León

Original artwork by Rita Ponce de León.

In the Absence of a Corpse

Soibam Haripriya

In this poem, Soibam Haripriya asks what we should we do in the absence of a corpse.

Domestic Affairs

Katayoun Amjadi

Domestic Affairs investigates the idea of home in body, structure, and land, and explores the culturally embedded promise of security and hope engendered in the archetypal house. It explores a conceptual topography of “place”; it is a kind of domestic archaeology.

Dreams as R-evolution

Coral Bijoux

Dreams as R-evolution—a visual art and single-use plastic installation of sculpture, drawings, and found objects—is an installation originally created in the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Westville campus plant nursery that now speaks to dreaming as a r-evolutionary act in an old colonial gallery, the IZIKO National Gallery in Cape Town.

Khalamuni

Efadul Huq

This poem is an act of mourning, remembering, and grieving a loved one taken by the pandemic.

Parking Ramp Project

Aniccha Arts

Aniccha Arts premieres a performance installation inside a seven-level parking garage. The project asks questions about transience, migration, and stability in a space that temporarily stores cars and is home to nothing. Performers pervade the parking structure with their bodies, working against the visible slant of the ramp to find their individual verticality. Questions we asked in creating the work: How do we find softness in a landscape of concrete? What anchors us on these alternating planes? How do we connect across such a complex landscape?

Solidarity with Palestine from Kashmir: Kashmiri, Hindi, and Urdu translations of Refaat Alareer’s ‘If I Must Die’

Ather Zia and Idrisa Pandit, with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz

Translations of Palestian poet Refaat Alareer’s poem, ‘If I Must Die’ in Kashmiri by Ather Zia and Idrisa Pandit, in Hindi by Richa Nagar, and Urdu by Abdul Aijaz. In her introduction Ather Zia writes of the deep love that Kashmiris have for Palestinian people and their struggle.

Teleportation | عَبْرَة

Ola Saad Znad

“Yes, Baghdad and I haven’t seen each other since the war, but am I brave enough to change its perfect image in my memory? The walls of Baghdad extend their reach to me, protecting the only solid memory I have of the place I love, where my roots run deep. These walls keep me wondering: what would my life be if I had never left my home?”

इंसानियत का लॉकडाउन

Richa Nagar and Richa Singh

The title of this piece translates to—Humanity in Lockdown. It documents the plight of migrant workers who fled Indian cities en masse, the deepening religious divide, and intensifying poverty in the context of COVID-19 pandemic and the nation-wide lockdown that was instituted in April 2020.

Apertures

Ritika Ganguly and Alia Jeraj

Apertures: A creative portrayal of domestic violence for SEWA-AIFW is a bricolage of stories and art forms. It draws on a variety of artistic disciplines to represent a spectrum of lived experiences of domestic violence in our societies, and the specter of patriarchy that shapes them. It tells four survivor stories from Minnesota through the lens of survivor stories in New Delhi and Chennai.

Fast and Out of Place

Colin W. Wingate

Original work by Colin W. Wingate

Baggage

Setareh Ghoreishi

In “Baggage,” I struggle with my baggage, all that I carry with me from home. Every day I carry my memories of Iran with me–with all the emotions and thoughts that brings. This performance shows the complexity inherent in both leaving and staying.

The Passage

Marijana Hameršak and Selma Banich

This work of Selma Banich & Marijana Hameršak that emerged in collaboration with the Women to Women Collective is a collection of portraits of migrants who lost their lives on the perilous journeys in the Balkans.

Step, step, breathe

Sophie Oldfield

I started running eight years ago as a way to be in my city, in Cape Town. Step, step, breathe (video above) shares how running gave me a way to move through Cape Town, to see it anew, and to participate in it.

Buried Waters

Efadul Huq

Efadul Huq’s visual poem revisits journeys along Dhaka’s besieged rivers, where the silent struggle against land developers echoes through cracked lines traced from memories captured on the banks of Turag.

Remembering, Honoring and Grieving Migrant Deaths: Unsettling the Politics of Grave Silence

Emina Bužinkić

Emina Bužinkić I write these lines to remember, record and grieve fallen migrants who fiercely fought against the relentless border regimes in the Balkans and wider European geographies. Pushed into despair and ultimately robbed of breath, thousands of migrants attempt to cross the perilous terrains of the Balkans only to meet police batons, electric shocks,…

Act One: The Multan Railway Station

Abdul Aijaz

Reflecting on his journey with Chup, Abdul Aijaz writes about how stories come together in surprising ways.

RMF: [Pre]Conceptions of a Movement & Interview with Zaynab Asmal

Zaynab Asmal, interviewed by Koni Benson

RMF:[Pre]Conceptions of a Movement, is a comic book written and drawn by Zaynab Asmal. It was the product of a final assignment for a third year history course “African History Through Comic Books: History for What and For Whom?” designed and taught by Koni Benson, a postdoctoral fellow at the time, at the University of Cape Town in 2016.