The Octagon

Ghadeer Alkhenaizi and Sara Musaifer

Our story began with a conversation between two friends, Ghadeer and Sara, walking back to the university library after a quick dinner in Dinkytown on a cold evening in December 2017. Fueled by the crisp air that filled our lungs, our feet rushed through crowded pavements and across busy streets, making their way through a fog of breath exhaled by warm bodies and buildings. Soon enough, our minds wandered away in denial, escaping the painful one mile walk under the cloak of another harsh Minneapolitan winter. Naturally, we both started thinking of home: Bahrain, or should we say: Bahrains?

Silence | CHUP

Fawad Khan

English translation of the script of CHUP | Silence by Fawad Khan.

Vellai Mozhi

Marappachi Theatre, A. Mangai, A. Revathi, and Tamilarasi Anandavalli

We live in a time when conflict and destruction are no longer the exception but the norm. It often feels like a dark cloud is looming over us. However, those of us who have chosen to live with the purpose of changing the world to the best of our ability always see a silver lining to these clouds. Here we feature a performance of A. Revathi’s Vellai Mozhi directed by A. Mangai as well as a bilingual (Tamil/English) panel discussion on the role of art in queer activism. We also include written comments from Mangai and Revathi on how art, theatre, and Vellai Mozhi have presented issues of sexuality in Tamil Nadu.

Not Everything that Shines is Gold

Ericka A. Lara Ovares and Juliana Vélez
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Collaborative writing isn’t easy. In the fall of 2017, Juliana and I (Ericka) took a class on ‘Ways of Knowing: Approaches to Knowledge and Truth in Development Studies and Social Justice’ that encouraged us to write together. Even though our fields are very different, we discovered we had a love for nature and our homelands in common. We took the opportunity to write on what threatens the vitality of our countries’ environments, and to write in a way that also reflects our people’s struggles to maintain sovereignty over their lands.

Basic Demographic Questions

Suzanne Chew

Suzanne Chew’s poem grapples with the question of a “good interview” and the extractive nature of traditional academic research.

Kaatru

Tamilarasi Anandavalli, A. Mangai, Marappachi Theatre

On June 7, 2020, a show rehearsed completely through Zoom was presented by Tamilarasi, a theatre student at the National School of Drama and a member of Marappachi. A video of this performance is shown below. The performance features a 20th Century poem by Bharathiyar (a modern poet in Tamil) titled Kaatru (Wind).

जसिन्ता को पढ़ने पर …

Vishal Jamkar and Richa Nagar

The essay in Hindi emerged organically over the course of several months as we jointly engaged with Jacinta Kerketta’s submission to AGITATE!. It continued to find inspiration from her ideas and poetry as it grew from our verbal discussions into Vishal’s diary, and then into a co-authored reflection and essay. To try to convey in English all of the contents of what has evolved in the preceding pages seems far too mechanical to us. Therefore, we offer here a summary of our engagement with Jacinta, chiefly for those readers who do not read Hindi.

Collective Anti-Disciplinarity: Feeling Promiscuous, Positioning Narrative, and Making Home

Siddharth Bharath, SeungGyeong Ji, Naimah Petigny, and Sandra Rellier
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Caste, Race, and Indigeneity Collective: How does one navigate the uneven terrains of scholarly recognition within academic work? What happens when no matter how loud you speak, certain bodies and the collectives they signify are not engaged, entirely dismissed or ignored within the academy, or within dominant intellectual and political institutions more generally?

Playing With Silence: Fawad Khan Speaks with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz

Fawad Khan with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz

Fawad Khan speaks to Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz about the journey of writing ‘Chup,’ bringing it to the stage given its critique of the oppressive state apparatuses, his vision and hope for art, and what the border-crossing by ‘Chup’ has meant for him.

Autopsy and State Violence: Implications in the Death Investigation of George Floyd

Deondre Smiles

This essay examines the circumstances surrounding the death investigation of George Floyd, tying it into larger discussions surrounding the role of law enforcement and state structures in death investigations and autopsies. Drawing upon indigenous studies research, the piece looks at the undue influence upon coroners and medical examiners in cases of death by police brutality that do not put law enforcement in legal jeopardy.

أبصار

Ahmed K. Ali

Original poetry and artwork by Ahmed K. Ali.

The Labor of Political Theatre as Embodied Politics: A Conversation

Richa Nagar, Anna Selmeczi
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What follows is a letter exchange between Anna and Richa. Richa’s book, Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability, underwent significant revisions during the course of this letter exchange. In addition to mediating on the labor of political theater and embodied politics, this exchange underscores the making of conversations and relationships as continuously unfolding journeys that cannot be contained by fixed words on the page.

TORRE DE MARFIM

Sarah Almeida, Matheus Caetano, Raquel Chaves, and Josinelma Rolande

An original poem by Sarah Almeida, Matheus Caetano, Raquel Chaves, and Josinelma Rolande.

The Perils and Possibilities of Creative Economy: A Conversation

Dia Da Costa, Richa Nagar, and Sarah Saddler
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This conversation, built around themes and questions discussed in Dia Da Costa’s book Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theatre (University of Illinois Press, 2016), analyzes the terrain of the “creative economy” and explores its ethical implications for national belonging, epistemic justice, and academic knowledge production through the politics of academic journeying.  Exploring the possibilities, limits, and risks of the creative economy across multiple personal trajectories and political realms, we offer perspectives on the creative economy as a landscape where colonial histories of violence, academic privilege and positionality, and possibilities for progressive politics become especially visible and critical.

Healthy Living

Jordan Starck

This set of companion poems agitates the dominant narratives that, for marginalized peoples, silent compliance will best secure their safety and wellbeing.

I am not your data

Abhay Xaxa, with a translation by Antonádia Borges
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The poem “I am not your data” by Abhay Xaxa. Translated to “Não sou seu dado” by A. Borges.

Sites of Contestation, Letters Between Friends

Keavy McFadden and Julie Santella
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What follows is a series of letters between the two of us – Julie and Keavy, two friends and agitators – that meditate on how we, as graduate students, step into the academic world inevitably carrying prior knowledges with us and must continually agonize about how to do justice to and with them in academic life. As we write to each other, we also write to you, in the hope that these reflections might help to remind you of the prior knowledges you also carry.

A Haunting, Howling Chup: Literature and Ecology of Violence

Abdul Aijaz

Reflecting on Chup, Abdul Aijaz asks, “How do you tell a tale that resists narration and yet screams to be told? How do you weave a narrative around a ‘chup’ that  is haunted by what it cannot say. How to share a story that so clearly unveils what it does not tell?”

Conversations Across Indigeneity

Dayamani Barla, Cante Suta-Francis Bettelyoun, Siddharth Bharath, and Tarun Kumar

AGITATE! is excited to share with you this conversation between Dayamani Barla, of the Munda adivasi community in India, a journalist and tribal rights activist; and Cante Suta-Francis Bettelyoun, of the Oglala Lakota in North America, coordinator of the University of Minnesota Native American Medicine Gardens.