Article
In the Absence of a Corpse
agitatejournalSoibam Haripriya So, what should we do in the absence of a corpse? I heard he died in trainingIn Bangladesh or BurmaWhat day do we choose for the Shraddh?Is this better than the stench ridden corpse?The son of the neighbour next doorReclaimed three days lateDeath degrading itself into stench The mother says “He isn’t deadI…
A Haunting, Howling Chup: Literature and Ecology of Violence
agitatejournalचुप्पी की बोली: एक मंथन
agitatejournalchuppī kī bolī: ek manthan प्रस्तुति: ऋचा नागर interwoven by richa nagar from collective reflections of parakh theatre group & chup’s audiences in mumbai roman transliteration by gwendolyn kirk & richa nagar चुप्पी की बोली chuppī kī bolī मैं इस नाटक के पल-पल से जुड़ गयी, सिर्फ़ एक इंसान होने के नाते, क्योंकि…
New Gaza
agitatejournalMarwan Makhoul [Improvisations by Oumenia El Khalif] اردو (Urdu) translation by Tanveer Anjum | हिन्दी (Hindi) translation by Richa Nagar | தமிழ் (Tamil) translation by Kavitha Muralidharan | മലയാളം (Malayalam) translation by Anupama Anamangad | বাংলা (Bangla) translation by Shamita Das Dasgupta|French translation by Houda Majdoub|Spanish translation by Dora Suárez|मराठी (Marathi) translation by Anamika |Amharic translation…
Introducing AGITATE! Volume 3: Stories, Bodies, Movements
Vol. 3 Editorial Collective
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 4 Breath and Death: COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and Virality
The AGITATE! Editorial Collective
Introducing AGITATE! Volume 5
agitatejournalStories and Ecologies of Violence:Walking Together in Solidarity and Silence/ Chup Abdul Aijaz and Richa Nagar I will tell you something about stories,[he said]they aren’t just entertainment.Don’t be fooled.They’re all we have, you seeAll we have to fight off illness and death. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony. What are stories, after all, if not an occasion for…
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.
Khalamuni
Efadul HuqDomestic Affairs
Katayoun Amjadi
Rita Ponce de León – Artwork 1
Rita Ponce de León
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.
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’
agitatejournalIntroduction by Ather Zia Kashmiri translations by Idrisa Pandit & Ather Zia Hindi transation by Richa Nagar & Urdu translation by Abdul Aijaz Glued to the small phone screen watching the genocide unfold in Gaza, Refaat Alareer’s interview crossed my feed. It was a heart-wrenching interview. A tearful Refaat was trying to reason with the world,…
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
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.
Baggage
Setareh Ghoreishi
Fast and Out of Place
Colin W. Wingate
The Passage
Marijana Hameršak and Selma BanichStep, step, breathe
Sophie Oldfield
Buried Waters
agitatejournalEfadul Huq Artist’s Note in this visual poem, i return to my journeys with dhaka’s rivers, all of which are under unceasing violence from land developers filling the rivers with sand to produce saleable urban land. the cracked lines in this piece were digitally traced from a photograph i took when walking along sand plots…
Act One: The Multan Railway Station
agitatejournalAbdul Aijaz Stories tend to have fascinating ways of traveling and intersecting with each other. They spill over, merge, or flow side by side on their subterranean paths, or jostle as torrents to be entangled in each other’s flows. Like travelers at a railway station, they squeeze past each other to continue on to their…
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,…
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.