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This volume addresses contemporary activist practices that aim to interrupt and reorient politics as well as culture. The specific tactics analyzed here are diverse, ranging from culture jamming, sousveillance, media hoaxing, adbusting, subvertising, street art, to hacktivism, billboard liberation, and urban guerilla, to name but a few. Though indebted to the artistic and political movements of the past, this form of activism brings a novel dimension to public protest with its insistence on humor, playfulness, and confusion. This book attempts to grasp both the old and new aspects of contemporary activist practices, as well as their common characteristics and internal varieties. It attempts to open up space for the acknowledgement of the ways in which contemporary capitalism affects all our lives, and for the reflection on possible modes of struggling with it. It focuses on the possibilities that different activist tactics enable, the ways in which those may be innovative or destructive, as well as on their complications and dilemmas. The encounter between the insights of political, social and critical theory on the one hand and activist visions and struggles on the other is urgent and appealing. The essays collected here all explore such a confrontational collaboration, testing its limits and productiveness, in theory as well as in practice. In a mutually beneficial relationship, theoretical concepts are rethought through activist practices, while those activist practices are developed with the help of the insights of critical theory. This volume brings scholars and activists together in the hope of establishing a productive dialogue between the theorizations of the intricacies of our times and the subversive practices that deal with them.

Protest movements. --- Social movements in art. --- Social movements in literature. --- Protest movements --- Social change --- Art --- Politics and culture --- Sociology & Social History --- Social Sciences --- Social Conditions --- Political aspects --- Social change. --- Politics and culture. --- Culture --- Culture and politics --- Change, Social --- Cultural change --- Cultural transformation --- Societal change --- Socio-cultural change --- Social history --- Social evolution --- Political aspects. --- Social movements --- Art and politics --- Politics and art

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Pen in the Park is a unique revolutionary children’s book written by Raşel Meseri and illustrated by Sanne Karssenberg. Meseri narrates the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul through the figure of a penguin named Pen, whogoes on a trip from Antarctica to Gezi Park to save his fellow penguins, and gets involved in various adventures with his friends Chapulletta, the cat Trafo, and the dog Loukanikos. The Gezi movement of 2013–14 started with the threat of the destruction of the Gezi Park, a public space, which became quickly occupied by protestors from all generations and political backgrounds to build a movement that addressed not only the destruction of green areas and gentrification of public space, but also the democratic deficit of the country as such. At the height of the protests, dozens of protesters were killed and thousands injured. As the result of the protests, the park remained a public space and the struggle continues in different forms up to this day. During the protests, penguins were reclaimed as one of the symbols, as the main television channels preferred to show documentaries about the lives of penguins, instead of the uprising in Turkey. In Meseri’s story, Pen the brave penguin, Pen, is both a symbol and an active agent in the course of events, guiding us through the process of political emancipation, democratic experiment, friendship, and solidarity that characterizes the Gezi movement.

Juvenile fiction --- Turkey --- Politics. --- Gezi park --- revolution --- fairytale

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Across the humanities and the social sciences, “cultural analysis” is a vibrant research practice. Since its introduction in the 1990s, its main principles have remained largely the same: interdisciplinarity, political urgency, a heuristic use of concepts, the detailed analysis of objects of culture, and an awareness of the scholar’s situatedness in the present. But is the practice still suited to the spiraling of social, political, and environmental crises that mark our time? Drawing on experiences in research, teaching, activism, and the creative arts, contributors explore what cultural analysis was back then, what it is now, and what it may be by 2034. In a shifting conjuncture, contributors strike notes of discomfort, defiance, and irony—as well as a renewed sense of urgency and care.

Cross-cultural studies. --- Popular culture --- Études transculturelles. --- Cultural studies --- Study and teaching.