Activist Passion: Art, Philosophy, and the Political Nasrin Himada A Thesis In the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture Humanities Doctoral Program Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada November 2014 © Nasrin Himada, 2014 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Nasrin Himada Entitled: Activist Passion: Art, Philosophy, and the Political and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Humanities) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: Dr. T. Waugh ___________________________________________________Chair Dr. B. Massumi __________________________________________________External Examiner Dr. K. Dickinson_________________________________________________ External to Program Dr. C. Hammond _________________________________________________Examiner Dr. S. Ruddick ___________________________________________________Examiner Dr. E. Manning __________________________________________________Thesis Supervisor Approved by: ___________________________________________________ Dr. J. Potvin, Graduate Program Director January 7, 2015 __________________________________________________ Dr. A. Roy, Dean Faculty of Arts and Science ABSTRACT Activist Passion: Art, Philosophy, and the Political Nasrin Himada Concordia University, 2014 In my dissertation, I explore interdisciplinary forms of artistic practice through the lens of what I call “activist passion.” Activist passion, as a concept, contributes to a rich field of research on how art practice creates new modes of engagement that alters the relation between subject and object. My use of the term “passion” draws inspiration from Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s “joyful passions,” as “the power to affect and be affected.” Activist passion arises out of an ethical concern that engages with artistic, curatorial, cinematic and writing interventions where there is an attempt to cohabitate and costruggle with others. I examine how these transversal practices not only engage the political, but create spaces for deeply ethical collaborations between artists, writers, filmmakers, curators and the agents of social struggle with whom they engage. From this form of interdisciplinary cohabitation emerges a positive, affective condition that I name “activist passion.” Unlike relational aesthetics or participatory art, activist passion is not a category of art practice, but rather an affective force that inspires new modes of engagement. The process of cohabitation emerges from the relations between cross- disciplinary and cultural practices that move beyond the narrow realm of art discourse. The projects in Activist Passion demonstrate the kinds of outcomes that are possible when art gives up on Art and enters wholeheartedly into social and political practices. iii Acknowledgements Thank you, Dr. Erin Manning for your supervision, support and encouragement. Thank you Examining committee: Dr. Cynthia Hammond, Dr. Sue Ruddick, Dr. Kay Dickinson, Dr. Brian Massumi. Thank you, Lucas AJ Freeman for your copyedits, your precision and rigor made my work shine. For my parents, Adnan Himada and Wafaa Kablaoui your openness, courage and love are contagious. For my brothers, nephew and niece, you are my lifeline, Yousif, Ahmed, Ali, Omar, Musa, Aliya For my friends, love abound. For my ancestors, Palestine lives here, in the I that is me that is you, steadfast and healing iv Table of Contents Prologue: Point of Entry 1-3 Chapter One: Activist Passion as the Pursuit of Magic 4-27 Chapter Two: Images of Activist Passion: On Palestinian Revolutionary Cinema 28-62 Chapter Three: Activist Passion is in How The Image Peoples 63-105 Chapter Four: The Spatial Violence of Activist Passion 106-153 Bibliography 154-161 Appendix I: Living in a Place with No Prisons: Prison Abolition and the collaborative artwork of Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace 162-167 II: “Nous la forêt” A Conversation with Épopée on the Québec Student Uprising 168-174 III: “Prison America” A Conversation with Chris Kraus on Summer of Hate 175-181 IV: Open Collectivities: Red Channels In Conversation with Nasrin Himada 182-190 Prologue: Point of Entry Inlet 1. a: a narrow area, bay or recess of the sea, a lake, or a river b: an opening through which air, gas, or liquid can enter something (such as a machine) 2. a place or means of entry; a way of entering; especially: an opening for intake The origin of inlet is letting water in, from Middle English inleten, “to let in,” from in + let. Let in. Inlet.1 In an interview, the fierce poet Eileen Myles, is asked by Michael Silverblatt, the host of the radio show Bookworm, what poetry tradition enters her work or is she influenced by. She replies, “It might be the tradition that decides to dedicate your life to poetry, it’s kind of like jumping off a cliff, and that’s a good thing.” Myles speaks of the moment where she had turned her back on academia, and decided to dedicate her life to writing. She committed to the struggle of survival, living her life as a poet. Myles’ reply to Silverblatt is indicative of the kind of risk that for some, like Myles, is necessary in order to do the work that is required to fulfill a calling, a passion. Myles opens up Silverblatt’s question, in a way offers her version of what tradition can entail, she gifts her definition as a way out of Silverblatt’s seemingly limited question. Tradition is no longer rooted in a discourse but is of risk. The tradition of taking a risk, to commit to being an artist or a poet, is the foundation of survival for a poet like Myles. Artists—in whatever form they practice—take risks and turn their backs on whatever distracts them from their calling. Assuming Silverblatt was expecting a different answer, Myles veers the conversation to an honest place, and one that underlines the effect of self-production, 1 “Inlet.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Web. 17 November 2014. 1 a tradition that is rooted in personal experience—“learning how to be yourself on a page.” Myles offers a more piercing portrait of what it means to live life as an artist, or better yet, how to live life as a work of art. As she tells Silverblatt, “Let’s all put a light on our own existence, understand that that’s liberation itself, and that’s the thing to write from, is the capacity to see oneself as while you’re standing in the light. I really feel that the performance of existence is the bedrock of poetry not the history of literature.” The “performance of existence,” she continues, is like “Standing there in all the riches, realizing this is it, and I can’t get all this down, I am not a movie camera. I am actually something more subtle. I can take a thought, I can take a phrase, I can take a shade of the wall, I can take a body heat. I can take a look in your eye, and form a structure out of that. If I wasn’t here in the deepest sense I couldn’t do that. The primary step is to be.” Myles’ response pushed me to ask: How do I think about this as a proposition? I am not interested in performing existence, or subjectivity on a stage. I am not interested in engaging with subjective experience per se. But I am interested in what Chris Kraus, another fierce literary figure, suggests, and that is to turn the “I” that is not personal, outward to the world—turning the “I” to an eye, “to form a structure” out of what I see, feel, or experience. The practice of being a writer is learning how to hear your self. Dodie Bellamy, an experimental writer, and one of the main figures of the New Narrative Movement, expresses a similar sentiment: “The only way we know the world is through the imperfect fucked-up lenses of our personality and body” (70). And in another section, in her brilliant book, The Buddhist, she writes, “The connection between writing and life can be so magical, and once that process takes over, the writing always wins” (56). I am far away from winning. But what I tried to do in this project is to get to a place where life 2 and writing, writing and curating, curating and activism find a place of cohabitation, where something happens, or where I think something did happen. The material I chose inspired me. The material moved me, and I was able to engage with it in an open, experimental way that pushed me to think about new modes of composition—how can writing express, in process and structure, the political, what remains at stake. I learned that my writing is often generated by what images can do to thinking, to thought. For me, images should not tell us what to think, but they should “trap us into new ways of thinking” (Bellamy, 61). I offer, as an epilogue, a point of entry to my thought process. I developed this project around the concept of activist passion. Activist passion stems from ingathering of what I have learned through experience. It is a concept that gives precedence to the work that happens across different registers of time and space, of inhabited roles and positions, of contradicting thoughts and actions, of ones that find affinity and connects to an emerging thought. An activist passion is a way to engage the world as if jumping off a cliff, of letting go of expectations, pressures, and fears. Activist passion is to engage with the poetics of risk and to walk away from what in the end will capture my thought rather than enliven it. This project is an “inlet” that opens up onto soft subversions, meant to invite the reader into a thought process that is seemingly personal, but that attempts to tackle (what does feel too intimate) as something that also feels true to analysis, in the sense of movement or rhythm, in the sense of affect and tone, in the sense of intuition and experimentation.