Bambi van Balen: Enchantment and Resistance: How To Dream Together

 

Thesis Advisor: Amit S. Rai

Thesis: Enchantment and Resistance: How To Dream Together

January 2023

Abstract

“Enchantment and Resistance: How To Dream Together” is a relational, embodied and autobiographical exploration of how dreaming is a form of practising deep attention, a form of healing in metabolising trauma and an emergent political strategy. Following Silvia Federici´s analysis on the witch hunt in parallel with the accumulation of capital, the essay activates a liminal historical trajectory of dreaming as modes of anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and queer-feminist resistance and speculative world building. Critical notes are on the tool based spirituality of the 60s Californian counterculture and the appropriation of Indigenous dream cultures. Dreaming Together is based on my practice with Tools for Action and a call to Reclaim Dream Space, on practices of commoning and to re-enchant the world through artistic and political ritual.

Author: Bambi van Balen