Manuel Callahan, Stefano Harney, Tonika Sealy Thompson: December 4, 2016 (Updated a year ago)

The Poetry Center and the SFSU Labor Archives and Research Center co-present "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, at City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus. Note: the recording begins in medias res.

Click here to listen to this audio file

Manual (Manolo) Callahan defines convivial research and discusses its history, and speaks from lessons learned from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and from his experience in collective community work in San Jose. Stefano Harney elaborates on the idea of conviviality as a choice, and discusses the two forms of improvement (how in bourgeois society the improvement of self and the improvement of property historically became entangled with one another) and ideas of study and learning. Tonika Sealy Thompson discusses creative making and convivial research as means of transformation, and her experience organizing festivals in Asia and the Caribbean. The panel then takes questions from the audience. They discuss the utilization of creative radical energy, the importance of recognizing and constructing tools, the romanticization of the global south, refusing notions of scarcity and instead recognizing abundance, and ways in which people can care for one another and their environment.

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