Women's March, Washington. Lafargue Damien/ABACA ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.Recent mobilisations in North America have captured global attention; I am referring, specifically, to the Black Lives Matter movement, the encampment at Standing Rock and the broader resistance to both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, and the ongoing protests against the new American administration. Each of these struggles has, in its own way, raised debates about the forms and expressions of political consciousness. For example, debates around intersectional feminism have been key to the platform of Black Lives Matter and were the basis of much critique surrounding the Women’s March. Numerous online discussions take up the question of what it means to be ‘woke’ in today’s political context. Particular forms of political analysis, specifically liberalism, are increasingly called out as insufficient to tackle the mounting violence of dispossession, exploitation, oppression, and white supremacy.
While much of the protest in North America, and around the world, is in response to the American president’s executive orders, for several years now mounting dissent has increasingly taken to the streets, whether it be in response to the ongoing refugee crisis, austerity measures in Europe, or to condemn acts of political and capital imperialist violence around the world. We appear to be entering a ‘movement moment’, or at least one in which protests, boycotts, and divestment are part of a public conversation again. For organisers of these movements, expanding people’s participation is key, but deepening their thinking about the issues is crucial. Without deepening political analysis, movement activists are susceptible to not only cooptation and infiltration, but also seductive reformist agendas that serve to re-imagine forms of oppression. Ava DuVernay’s recent documentary 13th is an excellent example of these tendencies in the American context.
