This article first provides a brief overview of the development of tenure and academic freedom in the U.S. amid a series of government efforts to surveille, discipline and remove from their university posts those anthropologists who spoke out against U.S. foreign policy or war, or in favor of civil rights. Following Ellen Schrecker's focus on key moments of academic repression, I draw on cases from World War I, the McCarthy era and the Vietnam War. The article goes on to draw attention to the systematic repression of pro-Palestinian speech, and to explore differences in the way the 20th-century university (1915-1975) and the modern corporate university have handled dissent. I argue that the contemporary university, shaped by decreased public support, a precipitous decline in tenure density, a greater dependence on the bond market and private philanthropy, and a new type of administration drawn from business and industry rather than faculty ranks, has become increasingly obedient to both government and corporate power.
This article examines the one thread in David Graeber’s thought that unifies his approach to anthropological knowledge, global history, and political action: his faith in the revolutionary power of the ‘constituent imagination’. The concept refers to the human capacity to collectively imagine alternative forms of social life and bring them into being. Graeber treated it both as a key driver of history and the most viable means to overcome capitalism by way of prefigurative politics. The article illustrates how Graeber turned structuralist anthropology into a myth-busting project aimed at awakening the constituent imagination. It then weighs the charges of idealism that have been levelled at his work, arguing that, to the degree his emphasis on the imagination came at the expense of recognizing class struggle, these charges have bite. Materialist analysis points up gaps in his account of both social change and political action. The article closes with a call to ground Graeber’s startling anthropology of possibilities in the tradition of historical materialism.
During the 2019 uprising in Chile, free-roaming dogs, so-called kiltros, confronting police were turned into symbols of resistance and gained significant attention in studying kiltro politics. While this analytical focus is stimulating for scholars, it is also troubling. It may narrow down such politics to rioting during mass protests and lead to the iconisation of kiltros. Therefore, we expand the focus by scrutinising less spectacular forms of kiltro politics in and after the uprising. Drawing on the ethnographic case of Los Pies del Cerro, an anarchist squat in Santiago, we argue that kiltra resistance emerges through cultivating autonomous collectivism in three more-than-human processes: making rules, carrying out reterritorialisations and cultivating affinities. In these instances, daily compa & ntilde;erismo (comradeship) of human and dog squatters is forged, allowing us to shift from Harawayan companion to compa & ntilde;era species and reframe the popular motto 'Resist like kiltro!' as 'Resist with kiltras!'.
This Commentary extends interspecies intersectionality by elaborating how the elements, in place, shape cases of more-than-human resistance. First, elemental forms - as non-biological entities - are shown to perform acts of more-than-human resistance. Second, the Commentary demonstrates how place features in resistance as a site of both ontological composition and epistemic possibility.
Drawing on my personal involvement in defending Dogs' Hillock - an 'urban wasteland' in a Warsaw neighbourhood - from transformation into an infrastructurally oversaturated city park, I examine a landscape of more-than-human resistance. First, discussing how the local residents-turned-activists were motivated by their emotional attachment to Dogs' Hillock and concern for local fauna and flora, I suggest that 'romance' can be a catalyst of resistance. Next, I describe how the activists practised 'administrative jujitsu', using scientific expertise and administrative law to defend the Hillock against dominant power. I argue that more-than-human resistance consists in the articulation of human and non-human modalities of agency and vulnerability. To effectively resist the planning regime, non-human life and human affects must be articulated to forms of political agency, including demonstrations, data-gathering, and legal action. At the same time, the resistance remains more-than-human: it would be impossible without the specific processes and rhythms of life of various non-humans.
