These video clips are the part of a series highlighting recent readings held by SF State’s Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives. Visit this website regularly for fresh poetic content. Advisory: contains strong language.
The Poetry Center presented “Working with Others: Convivial Research (Revisited),” a panel with Manuel (Manolo) Callahan, Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy Thompson, moderated by Steve Dickison, at the third annual Howard Zinn Book Fair, held December 4 at the City College of San Francisco’s Mission Campus. The Poetry Center and SF State Labor Archives and Research Center sponsored the panel.
Sealy Thompson talks about performance, conjuration and her present study with landscape architect Walter Hood, with an emphasis on making a kind of work that is “legible because we trust that it’s legible to the people who it’s legible to, and you don’t need to explain it.”
Harney talks about the work of Tyson Lewis on “inoperative education” and alternatives to “leadership” as the goal of study and learning.
Harney talks about the pernicious effects of historic European ideas of “improvement” of self and of property, “in a world where selves and properties are not a clear distinction.”
Callahan talks of lessons learned from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and offers a working definition of “convivial research” within communities working against the destructive effects of neoliberalism.