A minor theory of direct action politics and performance in New Orleans' economic justice movement
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4893679 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caroline Keegan (0000-0002-0852-5077, Texas A&M University) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 158-174 |
| Publication date | 2022-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/02637758211062600 |
| OpenAlex | W4200283074 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
In this paper, I develop a minor theory that blurs boundaries between prefigurative direct action and symbolic performance to reconsider strategies for resistance and world-building. Drawing on participant observation and interviews of economic justice organizers and activists in New Orleans in 2015, I examine two events through this minor theory: an immigration reform protest and a collaboratively written skit about income inequality. By emphasizing the performance of protest and the potential for protest through performance, I consider how these events empowered activists to make claims on spaces of the city, develop long-term embodied solidarities, disrupt dominant narratives, and en act more just alternatives. These events took place against the backdrop of intensifying racial and economic inequalities in post-Katrina New Orleans, following a long history of both repression and resistance in the city. Through performance-based direct actions, New Orleans's economic justice movement moves beyond a reactive politics rooted in outrage and anguish toward a direct action politics constructive of a more just world
Collective action · Contentious politics · Direct action · Economic Justice · Minor (academic · Outrage · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Social movement · Sociology · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Urban Planning and Governance
The Politics of Performance
Utopia in Performance
The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements
Making Other Worlds Possible
Beyond Geography, Past Time
Families Apart
Development Drowned and Reborn
Theatre & Race
The Latino Threat
Impossible Subjects
Plantation Futures
The Minor Gesture
Fictional Worlds
Feeling “Brexit”
Black Workers Matter”
Development Arrested
A Day Without Immigrants
Speaking, feeling, mattering
Direct Action and Liberal Democracy
Going Public
The Work of Performativity
Staging Testimony in Nanay
Revisiting minor theory
Becoming minor
Towards Minor Theory
Turning theatre into law, and other spaces of politics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |