Why We Behave
Grant Watson's presentation will focus on the long-term interview project “How We Behave”(2012 – present), which explores the tensions and relations between biography, practices of the self and a broader collective politics though queer and feminist narratives. After ten years, “How We Behave” is being archived online and reviewed in terms of how these narratives exceed the project’s original formulationas an investigation into life practices and politics of friendship, based on Michel Foucault’s interpretations of Cynic and Stoic texts from the 1980s. This present reading of the interviews incorporates a critique of Foucault and acknowledges the need to engender forms of solidarity out of particular oppressions, something stymied by a seeming incompatibility between so-called identity politics and, for example, Marxism. Countering this are feminist and queer Marxists (including figures such as Rosemary Hennessy, Angela Davis and Himani Bannerji) who refuse to sequester different sets of political demands but see a fully formed politics as coming from an understanding of the social as a complex metabolic system of elements in relation, including diverse forms of articulation grounded in material practices.
The presentation will share interview narratives which, in the spirit of the above, reflect the different registers of the political, including from Michelle Dizon (Los Angeles) Suely Rolnik (Sao Paulo) Teesta Setalvad (Mumbai) Akhil Katyal (New Delhi) and Diana McCarty (Berlin).
