A Pink Liberal Agenda

Barbie, Boat Brawls, and The Color of Resilience! The tripod is back to talk about the aesthetics of resistance. You can also follow Sahil's B-plot blanket gymnastics at our website

This is an expansion of a conversation that was originally had for the American Anthropological Association, the abstract for which is below:

For many marginalized and minority students, the Ph.D. can be a site of violence, mirroring and leveraging homophobia, racism, and misogyny under the cover of academic rigor. This situation is at times so bleak that students give up - some on the Ph.D., some on caring for their mental and physical health, and some have taken their own life. While this is widespread across the Ph.D. experience, anthropology, with its history as a tool of colonization, should be the site of reflection and transformation. So it is with great urgency that we ask: How can resistance and endurance be created through joy and aesthetics? This paper examines the case of a cohort who banded together in the face of academic and state violence. Rather than falling into a culture of toxic critique or allowing themselves to be divided by competition, they decided to cooperate. They baked and cooked to show care for each other. They came to seminars color-coordinated as a joyful show of solidarity with each other. In creating a herd aesthetic that confused those in positions of power who perpetrated violence, they protected each other. They created a fictive person who, with an email address and social media, accompanied each of them throughout their respective fieldwork. To the outside, it looked silly and nonsensical. But these acts of resilience grounded participants to their work and the self, despite the violence enacted on them (and which still has long-reaching implications to this day).

Check out the original 40-minute convo, a transcript, and everything else you want to know about the Society of Reluctant Anthropologists check out our website sorapod.com