Climate Resistance Research
It is necessary that academics share their research and analysis with the climate movement. It is necessary activists share their knowledge with academia. Together we can change the tide — a tiny bit.
Activism is the rent we pay for living on this planet — and I feel a strong urge to pay what is due. Because I’m afraid, because I’m proud, and because I am capable to do so. Next to putting my body on the line, I feel like my contribution can also be informed by the circumstances that I have time to do research, to analyse strategies and to write it all down. Climate Resistance Research will post reflections on social movements, climate justice, resistance, privilege, denial, hope, shame, joy and the beautiful trouble that is coming. We are rising.
I want to collect reflections on climate change resistance in this series. This will include reflections on my own research — that I try to type fast and with emotion — and hopefully, in the future, also that of others. University can beat all the life out of you, with its high demands for perfection. Academia can be lonely, it’s high standards can drive you nuts, and the articles some professors have worked on for months might be read by close to no one. Journals with academic articles are often inaccessible or prohibitively expensive, and the jargon and length might prevent people from reading the article even if they do get the chance to open it. With this medium blog, I want to make sure that I can share my thoughts with whoever wants to reflect, think and rebel with me. Without endless footnotes and complicated jargon, but with the critical insights.
This January, I started my PhD on ‘Discomfort and Climate Change Activism’. My research interest thus lies with social movement theory, philosophy on civil disobedience and direct action, philosophy of emotions — i.e., discomfort, negative emotions like desperation, shame, guilt, anger, and hope, pride and joy, and environmental philosophy, about climate change, nature, the anthropocene, etc. I will write about environmental privilege and how climate justice is on the intersection of different axes of oppression, about violence, police intimidation, social movement strategies, and how we sometimes reproduce the oppressions we find in society within our own groups. I will write reflections on past climate justice actions, on existing movements like Fossil Free Culture, Extinction Rebellion, Code Rood and Ende Gelande, and on reasons why people get into action.
My activism influences my philosophical writing, my academic research informs my activism. I think that’s the way to go for people like me, who have the time and socio-economic circumstances to reflect and rebel.
If you have comments, critique, want to share thoughts, or get in touch, please do! Preguntando caminamos. Asking we walk.
