TY - JOUR
T1 - How concepts do activism:
T2 - as worlds, aids, cells, and currents
AU - Cooper, Davina
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2025/3/9
Y1 - 2025/3/9
N2 - What is conceptual activism and how should we understand the form and affordances of the concept as it takes shape within it? Drawing on interviews with twenty-three interdisciplinary academics, along with social theoretical and empirical research, this article offers an onto-methodological approach to the concept, focused on the work of concepts (qua concepts) in critical, prefigurative, campaigning and counter-institutional projects. Foregrounding the materiality of the concept, the discussion focuses on four figures through which the concept assumes shape: the aid, world, animate cell and current. While the ‘aid’ (or ‘tool’) is a familiar conceptual figure, concerned with the different ways that concepts get used – to know, act, stimulate, etc., the others are less familiar. In this article, the ‘world’ reveals how concepts are inhabited as people enter, move around, cultivate and care for them. The ‘cell’ reveals how concepts move and thrive, live, fight and die, cluster and disperse. The ‘current’ reveals how concepts exert a force that ebbs and alters, impacting on those who intentionally or otherwise get caught up in it. Tracing these different figures shows how concepts are inhabited, used, observed and felt within conceptual activism. However, aids, worlds, cells and currents are not discrete and distinct conceptual existences, nor is one (or other) better at explaining what concepts are. Rather, these figures combine in different patterns, including sequentially, and the concept qua concept acquires shape as it occupies and travels between them.
AB - What is conceptual activism and how should we understand the form and affordances of the concept as it takes shape within it? Drawing on interviews with twenty-three interdisciplinary academics, along with social theoretical and empirical research, this article offers an onto-methodological approach to the concept, focused on the work of concepts (qua concepts) in critical, prefigurative, campaigning and counter-institutional projects. Foregrounding the materiality of the concept, the discussion focuses on four figures through which the concept assumes shape: the aid, world, animate cell and current. While the ‘aid’ (or ‘tool’) is a familiar conceptual figure, concerned with the different ways that concepts get used – to know, act, stimulate, etc., the others are less familiar. In this article, the ‘world’ reveals how concepts are inhabited as people enter, move around, cultivate and care for them. The ‘cell’ reveals how concepts move and thrive, live, fight and die, cluster and disperse. The ‘current’ reveals how concepts exert a force that ebbs and alters, impacting on those who intentionally or otherwise get caught up in it. Tracing these different figures shows how concepts are inhabited, used, observed and felt within conceptual activism. However, aids, worlds, cells and currents are not discrete and distinct conceptual existences, nor is one (or other) better at explaining what concepts are. Rather, these figures combine in different patterns, including sequentially, and the concept qua concept acquires shape as it occupies and travels between them.
KW - concepts
KW - activism
KW - epistemologies
KW - radical politics
KW - prefigurative politics
KW - transformative methods
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=86000540159&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09502386.2025.2467716
DO - 10.1080/09502386.2025.2467716
M3 - Article
SN - 0950-2386
SP - 1
EP - 30
JO - Cultural Studies
JF - Cultural Studies
ER -