Is violent self-defense ethical? In the history of colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism, there has long been a dividing line between bodies “worthy of defending” and those who who have been disarmed and rendered defenseless. That those subject to the most violence-the enslaved, the colonized, the oppressed-have been forcibly made defenseless raises, for any movement of liberation, a question: Can violence be used in the interests of self-defense?
Philosopher Elsa Dorlin looks across the global history of the left to trace the politics, philosophy, and ethics of self-defense. With a historical gaze that captures slave revolts, British suffragists’ training in jujitsu, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Black Panther Party, queer neighborhood patrols, and Black Lives Matter, Dorlin discovers a “martial ethics of the self”: a practice in which violent self-defense is the only means for the oppressed to ensure survival and to build a livable future.
Issue 1 of Substanz, featuring text and drawings by Gisela Hochuli. This performance arts issue is published on the occasion of Acción|MAD17-XIV Encuentro de Arte de Acción Madrid, November 2017.
Text in German and English.
Kindly Donated for the Swiss Live Art Study Room Guide.
Draws on the theory and practice of the black radical tradition to support, inspire and extend contemporary social and political thought and aesthetic critique.
Includes: Pride (poem), Alter treego (poem), Fat Kid Manifesto (poem, extract from Fat Kid Running), Daring the City to Fall into it (poems + a short story), No guilt in Pleasure (zine)
Editor: Georgeous Michael | Reference: P4075 | Type: Publication
Asking urgent questions about drag today, Louche takes a critical and constructive approach to queer performance culture: its past, present and future. Featuring contributions from over thirty artists, writers and illustrators.