What is Militant & Co-Research?
Kevin Van Meter | Team ColorsFor the workshop:
Maps, Drifts, Interventions and Inquiries:
What (Else) Can Independent Media Do?
Julie Perini
&
Kevin Van Meter
(of Team Colors Collective)13 September 2008 as part of the Portland Grassroots Media Campwww.pdxmediacamp.org
Introduction
1.
Defining Inquiry, Militant & Co-Research2.
A Genealogy of Militant & Co-Research3.
What Does Militant & Co-Research Provide to Grassroots Media4.
In the Middle of a Whirlwind: An Example of Militant Research in the US5.
Additional Examples of Militant & Co-Research Projects
Defining Inquiry, Militant & Co-Research
“Militant research is that process of re-appropriation of our own capacity of
worlds
-making, which (…) questions, problematizes and pushes the real through a series of concrete procedures.”
- Precarias a la Deriva
(Madrid, Spain)“What does knowledge become when it renounces thecomfort of “critical distance” with regards to the “object,”when it refuses each and every “evenly balancedevaluation” and adopts a point of view based in struggles?How is the ability to research experienced when it becomes part of the experience of life, when it becomes potential tocreate? What happens when the discussion is no longer about “who is who:” who is on the inside and who on the outside; who “thinks” and who“acts;” who has the right to speak and who is better off letting others speak on their
What is Militant Research? Kevin Van Meter
behalf? When the question who is who is no longer policed, a new possibility emerges:that of producing together.”
- Situaciones - Colectivo de investigacion
(Argentina)
Inquiry
is simply the process of producing knowledge and addressing problems; and thereis a long history of political inquiry in radical and revolutionary movements. Anysubstantive and engaged political campaign, organizing drive, and community processesutilizes methods of inquiry to understand the conditions of life, politics and to createinitiatives. Within larger radical and community organizing traditions of inquiry, there ismilitant and co-research.
Militant research
refers to “research carried out withthe aim of producing knowledge useful for militant or activist ends” as well as “research that is carried out ina fashion that keeps with the aims and values of radical militants.”
Co-research
“is a practice of intellectual productionthat does not accept a distinction between activeresearcher and passive research subjects. At its bestco-research aims for a productive cooperation that transforms both into active participants in producing knowledge and in transforming themselves.”
Team Colors
, the collective of which I am part, refers to this as inquiring into theencounter - inquiring into the in between.Finally, practices of inquiry take place in radical movements and community organizinginitiatives that don’t fall under these concepts, and there are complementary and counter-traditions of inquiry to these.
A Genealogy of Militant Research
While inquiry, militant and co-research have long and varied histories we can point to afew interesting examples of their development.
Workers Inquiry:
Karl Marx in 1880 developed a list of 100 questions (101 in other translations) on the conditions of the working class in France, and his partner FriedrichEngels thirty-six years earlier produced “The Conditions of the Working Class inEngland”. These became points of reference for the Marxist and workers movements.
Situationist International:
In looking to inquire into the conditions of everyday life, agroup of French artists and revolutionaries developed techniques, such as mapping,dérive (drift) and détournment.
What is Militant Research? Kevin Van Meter
Operisti, Autonomia & Autonomist Marxism:
During the factory struggles of the early1960’s Italian
Operisti
(workerists) began to develop militant research techniques(surveys, interviews, discussions with factory workers) to understand the struggles taking place in factories and the university that were outside of the unions and political parties.These techniques carried on as the site of struggle changed from factory struggles to thesocial factory – that is the conditions of work and life in all of society – hence thedevelopment of the Autonomia movement in Italy. As these techniques, concepts andideas spread beyond Italy they intersect with those of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari and American radicals such as HarryCleaver, who called this current of heterodox Marxism that“begins with existing struggles” and the autonomy of theworking class (now broadly defined to include all those that“revolt against work”),
Autonomist Marxism
. In the UnitedStates initiatives such as
Zerowork
, the
Wages for Housework Campaign
,
Midnight Notes Collective
and
Processed World
carried on this current, often in concertwith older radicals like C.L.R. James, Marty Glaberman andGeorge Rawick.
Precarity:
Carrying this tradition into the present - developing in the wake of the counter-globalization movement and the cycle of protest that marked it - struggles around
precarity
have emerged in Europe, South America and across the planet. Herein newresearch projects have developed and pushed militant research in more participatory andradical directions, hence seeking to break down the barrier between researcher and the subject of research.Additionally, these new projects have sough to “queer theseconcepts” and bring them into contact with feminist, queer,and anti-racist discourses.
What Does Militant & Co-Research Provide toGrassroots Media
Militant and co-research provides
a set of tools – that isconcepts, techniques and mechanisms – that contribute tograssroots and independent media’s existing frameworks byadding research components and by taking a direct role in producing knowledge and strategies that resonate with movement campaigns,organizations, and initiatives. Here militant and co-research provides “a focus onstruggle from the perspective of struggle”. Hence in seeking to identify the developmentof new subjectivities and new emergences, as well as understand current class andmovement composition – these research tools produce strategies and insights for strategicthinking. Additionally, militant and co-research provides opportunities for communication, a widening of the field of struggle, and dialog around importantstruggles in everyday life. Grassroots and independent media when they resonate with
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