Contribution short abstract:

Activist communities are interesting settings to experiment with forms of joint knowledge production. While finding shared perspectives and ways to benefit everyone might become non-issues, critique, disagreements and time commitment might be particularly difficult to negotiate care-fully.

Contribution long abstract:

Activist communities are particularly interesting settings to experiment with participatory, co-laborative (Niewöhner, 2016) or other forms of joint knowledge production. Activists are not only reacting explicitly to the challenges and changes of our increasingly unwell world, but are also often working with the same theories and concepts as (more) academically affiliated researchers. Those I co-laborate with to examine considerations of intersectionality in anti-racist activism in Flanders, for example, usually read the same texts and engage with the same slogans as me. Finding ways in which the research can benefit everyone engaged might become a non-issue in these contexts where discussions within and between groups constitute learning or networking moments for everyone. But how do we navigate feedback, disagreements and joint growth in such politically delicate contexts where any overt critique risks being used against a group or movement?

Ideally, co-laborating researchers are facilitators who bring people together by organising a space to meet, discuss and create knowledge together. As the ones being paid for the research work, they also offer their time, e.g. by adapting to the other participants’ schedules, by transcribing and writing, or by searching thought-provoking literature. Yet, time is often scarce in the neoliberal university. As co-laborating researchers with a wish to decolonise, to queer and to counter powerful hierarchies, this is a tension we have to constantly re-negotiate by finding creative ways to make time for joint learning, while also protecting our own as well as the other participants’ time commitments as a practice of care.