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Intimate Publics: Autoethnographic Meditations on the Micropolitics of Resistance
Author(s) -
Rosario Melissa
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12036
Subject(s) - resistance (ecology) , space (punctuation) , publics , interpersonal communication , sociology , public space , interpersonal violence , gender studies , media studies , political science , law , social science , poison control , suicide prevention , politics , linguistics , engineering , architectural engineering , medicine , ecology , philosophy , environmental health , biology
Summary This article is based on 18 months of fieldwork with a group of male activists who inhabit a nine‐year‐old protest site, blocking a controversial development project. In it, the female author grapples with the contradictions she notes between the stated intentions of the occupation and her own experiences within it. Through careful mix of her own experiences in the space and material she once discarded from her data—silences, rumors, violence—this article demonstrates that possibilities for rescuing public space are limited by interpersonal relationships between campers. By writing in an experimental mode, the author demonstrates how the act of analysis becomes entangled in the very social dilemmas it aims to uncover.