Public e-seminar on media practices and the radical imagination

By Veronica Barassi
via EASA Media Anthropology Network mailing list

We will be launching our next e-seminar on Tuesday 25 October 2016 at 00:00 GMT. If you are new to the list, our e-seminars run for a period of 2 weeks and they are vibrant spaces for discussion and confrontation on a specific paper.

E-seminars are free and open to anyone with a genuine interest in the anthropology of media. To participate please subscribe to our mailing list via this page.

For our 58th E-Seminar we will be discussing the following paper by Dr Alex Khasnabish (Mount Saint Vincent University) and Dr John Postill (RMIT University, Australia) will be acting as discussant.

On media practices and the radical imagination

The radical imagination is the collective, dialogic capacity to envision how the world might be otherwise that sparks between people in the context of generative, critical encounters. It is also the animating force of robust, radical movements for social change. What media channels does the radical imagination travel and what is their significance? How do these different pathways shape, facilitate, or constrain the radical imagination and impact movement-building? Drawing on research conducted with radical social justice activists in the Anglophone North Atlantic over the last decade, I explore the relationship between activist media use and the circulation of the radical imagination. I consider “media” expansively, looking across a range of channels and practices including documentary film screenings, social and digital media, community discussion groups, speaker’s series, print publications, and spectacles of dissent and resistance. I pay particular attention to the way that different media practices amplify or undermine the ability of radical activists and organizers to communicate with those beyond the ranks of the already-convinced. I conclude by considering important directions for engaged research in this area and the methodological issues they pose.

You can find the paper to download from our website
http://www.media-anthropology.net/index.php/e-seminars

Really looking forward to the discussion

Veronica

Dr Veronica Barassi
BA Anthropology and Media Programme Convenor
Department of Media and Communications,
Goldsmiths, University of London